


The Same Species As Shakespeare

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Mystery, Obsession, craziness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:09:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 34
Words: 137,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has been casually fascinated by Draco Malfoy for a long time. Draco has wanted to get one over on Harry Potter for the same length of time. When a person who seems intent on getting Draco in trouble for crimes he didn’t commit throws them in each other’s way, neither is exactly averse to the situation. But obsession, whilst perhaps a good idea in the abstract, is going to prove a very ugly reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Though This Be Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hpstrangelove back in 2008, who made a generous donation to livelongnmarry, and provided me with a prompt about Draco having an obsession with Harry and being not such a nice bloke; Harry being present when Draco has an attempt made on his life and getting put on the case as a result; betrayal in their relationship; and Lucius being an observer of the whole thing. The title comes from the following quote by Aldous Huxley: “Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful.” The chapter titles come from various Shakespeare plays; the name of Tudor Palliser is a play on Anthony Trollope’s character of Plantagenet Palliser.
> 
> This fic does get fairly creepy in places. It also takes place in an AU where DH never happened.

“You’re certain.” Kingsley rapped his fingers on the desk for long moments before leaning back in his chair. He looked as though he was a few minutes away from folding his arms and pouting. Harry worked hard to smother a grin. He could understand Kingsley’s reaction. Until Harry had told Kingsley what he’d sensed, it seemed certain they had proof that Draco Malfoy was involved in the release of a wild hippogriff.  
  
 _Among a long series of minor crimes that he appears to have been involved in_ , Harry thought, but shook his head. No, what he’d felt this afternoon simply didn’t admit of Malfoy actually having been present at the crime scene.  
  
“I am, sir,” he said. When Kingsley scowled at him, Harry did let a small smile slip out, but added, “Sorry.”  
  
“Explain to me again what Ollivander explained to you.” Kingsley drew a piece of parchment and a quill towards him. Harry hoped he would write it down this time. Kingsley forgot the wording each time Harry explained, because the world would be so much simpler if it weren’t true.  
  
“Yes, sir.” Harry stared pointedly until Kingsley gave the sigh of a martyr expected to contribute to his own stoning and started writing. “He told me that I could use Draco Malfoy’s wand during the war, after I acquired it during the Battle of Malfoy Manor, unusually well. I asked him why. He said that the affinity in this case came through the wood, just as the affinity between my wand and Voldemort’s came through the cores. The hawthorn tree that made Malfoy’s wand and the holly that made mine grew close together.”  
  
Kingsley gave him a skeptical look. “And that’s really enough for you to tell when Malfoy is nearby?”  
  
Harry gave a little shrug. “Ever since the war, it has been. I never stopped ‘listening’ to his wand, as Ollivander puts it, once it taught me how to listen—though as far as I’m concerned, the feeling I get from the wand isn’t really audible. And I was close enough to the suspect this afternoon to feel the vibrations when he cast the Tripping Jinx at Ron. That isn’t Draco Malfoy’s wand.”  
  
“He might be using another,” Kingsley said without much hope.  
  
“Because he knows I can sense his?” Harry shook his head. “Ollivander swears that he hasn’t given him that information, sir, and I believe him. It’s not something that can be known unless it’s told, or unless Malfoy had handled my wand in return, which he never did.”  
  
Kingsley added a final ferocious scribble to the end of the parchment and stared at it as if it would do him the courtesy of bursting into flame. When it didn’t, he turned to Harry. “The Department Head is getting rather insistent that I find the perpetrator of these crimes, as you know,” he said. “Whoever he is, he’s been moving steadily closer to Muggle areas.”  
  
Harry nodded solemnly. After the Battle of Malfoy Manor, which had very nearly revealed the existence of the wizarding world to half the Muggles in Britain, paranoia about secrecy was higher than ever. Wizards and witches now went to Azkaban for crimes like Muggle-baiting that once would have carried only a minor fine. Without Harry to give evidence that Malfoy hadn’t been there this afternoon, Hit Wizards would already have descended on Malfoy Manor.  
  
“But if you say it’s not him, it’s not him,” added Kingsley. “The last thing I want is to arrest innocent men and women.”  
  
Harry nodded as he stood. “Is there anything else, sir? Only I need to finish the report on the crime before I forget important details.”  
  
Kingsley simply looked at him. Harry stared back as long as he could, then stuffed his hands into his robe pockets and looked away.  
  
“You should have let me arrest her,” Kingsley said quietly.  
  
“It was a personal matter,” Harry snapped, and then tried to soften his voice. Kingsley was a friend, even if he was being an interfering busybody right now. “The last thing I need is the  _Daily Prophet_  trumpeting that I use the Aurors as my own personal wand to curse anyone I don’t like.”  
  
“You’d rather they trumpet what she told them instead?”  
  
Harry grimaced. No, it had not been a fun two weeks in his life whilst Penelope Armitage told the  _Prophet_  everything she knew about Harry’s sexual preferences. Harry had dated her for six months and tried a few things with her he wouldn’t have tried with a less adventurous partner. And he had been paying for that trust ever since.  
  
But still, having Kingsley arrest Penelope wasn’t the answer. Harry had suffered through the storm of laughter, scandal, and faked outrage until he and Ron arrested Ernest Paddington, the notorious ‘Child Catcher.’ Photographs of the arrest, and then of the victims, had displaced the news of Harry Potter’s sex life from the front page rather quickly. And then the parents of the victims had sued the  _Prophet_  for printing those pictures without permission, and Rita Skeeter had to employ her quill in her own defense for once.  
  
“I’d rather they ignored me entirely,” said Harry, forcing a lightness he didn’t feel into his tone. Penelope wasn’t the only lover of his who had betrayed him like that, but she’d done it more thoroughly, and had hurt him more than—well, more than anyone had since Joshua, the very first. The  _Prophet_  pounced on the revelations like a ravening wolf each time. Harry had kept his attention to admiring but not touching for a long time before Penelope, and it looked like he would have to do the same thing again now. “But that won’t happen, so at least I can avoid giving them more fodder.”  
  
Kingsley sighed again, in that way that meant he disagreed but didn’t intend to press the issue. Harry had learned everything about Kingsley’s sighs that he needed to survive during three years of Auror training and two years’ work as a full Auror. “All right, Harry. Then go write your report, and have a good weekend after that.”  
  
Harry managed a real smile this time, and wandered out of the Head Auror’s office back in the direction of the one he shared with Ron. He felt glances on his back, envious and admiring and everything in between. He ignored them. At least staying out of office politics was less difficult than finding a lover who wouldn’t tell all his secrets.  
  
It helped that he had something to occupy his thoughts during his every spare moment.  
  
Finding out he could sense Malfoy’s wand had led him to write to Ollivander, and Ollivander’s answer had made him observe Malfoy more closely during the last few years. Of course, everyone knew Malfoy was fabulously wealthy and successful, so articles about him were in plentiful supply, and Harry could learn what he needed to know without getting too near. And if he kept those newspapers a little longer than normal, or sometimes mentioned Malfoy to his friends in unrelated contexts…it wasn’t as though he would ever  _do_  anything about it. Harry might respect what Malfoy had made of himself since the war; he was certain Malfoy still felt the same as ever about him.  
  
When he ambled into the office, he found Ron confronting an owl. Harry raised his eyebrows and leaned against the wall to watch.  
  
The owl was a large gray bird with white edges to its feathers and rings of black encircling its golden eyes. It sat with wings spread and talons splayed across Harry’s desk. Whenever Ron took a step towards it, it gave a series of soft but threatening hoots, and darted its head forwards to snap and bob. Ron would mutter curses, among which, “Stupid bird,” could be heard most prominently.  
  
“Am I interrupting something?” Harry asked at last.  
  
Ron leaped straight up in the air and yelped. Since the war, he was rather easily startled. Harry made sure his grin was in place when Ron landed and whipped around, glaring. Of course Harry was gentle with his friend’s startlement and its consequences when it got really bad, as Ron was always sympathetic about Harry’s lovers betraying him. On the other hand, a certain amount of teasing about such things had always been necessary and natural between them.  
  
“That owl is the most malevolent, stubborn, stupid bird I’ve ever met in my life,” said Ron, and pointed a finger dramatically at Harry’s desk. “It hasn’t given me that letter even though it’s been here for ten minutes.”  
  
On cue, the owl opened its wings, took off from the desk, and landed on Harry’s shoulder, taking the time to deliver a nip to Ron’s ear as it flew past him. It held out its foot tamely, and let Harry take the letter attached to it. Then it cooed and pressed its beak against Harry’s cheek, before swooping out the door into the corridor without even asking for payment.  
  
“It seems you didn’t get the letter because it was intended for me,” Harry pointed out, and ripped the envelope open. It was a fine envelope, he noted with mild curiosity, and the outside bore curving golden script. Of course, he received such an invitation on an average of once a week. The main curiosity here was that he didn’t recognize the writing, and in the past five years he’d learned to know all the charities and good works whose functions he felt like attending. The ones that didn’t impress him learned not to keep sending invitations.  
  
“That bird was still malevolent,” Ron muttered, and took his seat behind his desk.  
  
“Terrifying,” Harry agreed gravely, and stared at the letter.  
  
A moment later, he was still staring. A few more moments, and Ron lifted his head and looked worriedly at him.  
  
“All right, mate?” he asked. “Is it another disguised Howler from Penelope?”   
  
Harry shook his head. “It’s—it’s an invitation from Malfoy to the Palliser House,” he said. Ron stared at him blankly. Harry rolled his eyes. “You know, the new manor house he just designed? He wants me to visit on Sunday, when the owner intends to hold a public viewing.”  
  
Harry went back to staring at the letter in wonder. It was one thing to know that Malfoy had become a famous and respected architect of numerous manor houses for wizards who didn’t have a grand home but wanted one, and another to find himself commanded in appropriately haughty language to come and see one. And it was clear now why the owl hadn’t waited for a response. Malfoy simply assumed he would come.  
  
“You’re not going, right?” Ron asked. “I mean, it’s probably a trap, considering the way he’s always felt about you.”  
  
Harry smiled at the letter.   
  
“Harry? Mate?”  
  
Harry hummed under his breath as he walked over to his desk and sat down, placing the letter in front of him where he could reach it easily.  
  
“Sometimes I worry about you,” Ron said flatly, and presumably went on worrying, but Harry was daydreaming and didn’t hear him.  
  
*  
  
“It’s grand,” said Tudor Palliser, tilting his head back so that he could admire the vaulted ceiling Draco had put in the entrance hall of his home. “Grand” appeared to be the only term of praise that Palliser, a nervous if wealthy and congenial half-blood, could commit himself to using. He turned to examine the far side of the hall, where the ceiling dipped and became part of a pillared walkway open to the wind. “And, ah, you’re quite certain that the watchstones will guard me?” He visibly stopped himself from looking over his shoulder at Draco.  
  
“Yes, they will.” Draco rocked on his heels and glimpsed the ceiling above their heads again. An enormous vault, precisely balanced on its gleaming marble walls, and decorated with shining mosaic tiles that depicted pivotal events of wizarding history, it deserved better than “grand.” But at least Draco would not have to live in this house and hear it deprecated so. Draco always carried away an experience that the people he sold his houses to could never duplicate: he dwelt in them imaginatively for so long that he learned to value their beauty and their strength, their flaws and purely utilitarian features, as parts of a whole. He  _comprehended_  it. People like Palliser, who tended to overvalue one room or wing at the expense of others, and find themselves overwhelmed by the very grandeur they had ordered Draco to construct, dwindled into shadows in the house’s immense light.  
  
And, of course, the secrets Draco learned during his consultations with the owners, the positioning of private rooms and treasure vaults, the hidden exits they wanted and the fears they revealed by their choices of certain security spells, fed an appetite most of them didn’t imagine he had.  
  
“A wonderful invention, watchstones.” Palliser sighed noisily. His ginger moustache—and Draco had had to comment on that privately to himself the first time he met the man; what proper wizard grew a moustache instead of a beard?—fluttered in the wind from his nostrils. “They should ensure that we can never be taken by surprise again.”  
  
“Yes,” Draco murmured. He was less impressed with watchstones, invented in the wake of Voldemort nearly revealing everyone to Muggles. He understood their limitations too well after installing them in twenty of the houses he’d built. They prevented Legilimency, possession, Occlumency, and any other form of mental magic in the houses they guarded, and they would sound alarms that could not be evaded if people with harmful intentions towards the home or its owner approached.  
  
 _What no one tells you_ , Draco thought in contentment as he watched Palliser stare happily at the bulbous gray watchstones studding the sides of the walkway,  _is that the architect can command them to ignore his own Legilimency._  
  
“And of course you’ll be here at the presentation.” Palliser turned and regarded him with the haughtiness he’d been trying to copy from Draco’s own manners since they first met. Draco had to admit that he came closer this time, which meant his performance was merely embarrassing instead of cause for moving to France and adopting a new name. “It’s to be two days from now. I’ll need you to escort my visitors around the house and recite all those technical terms I can never remember.”  
  
“Surely,” Draco said. Then he paused, a small hesitation creeping into his movements which Palliser picked up on at once. If Draco had to make his signals a little broad for someone like Palliser to notice, well, that was the price of dealing with the lesser orders.   
  
“What is it?” Palliser demanded. “I’m willing to pay you extra Galleons to be here, you know that.”  
  
“Oh, I know,” Draco said. “You’ve been more than generous with your money.”  _And your confessions_. Palliser had less sensitivity to Legilimency than most people, and Draco had been able to stroll through his mind whilst still holding a conversation. “I was wondering if you would mind my giving an extra invitation to a special guest.”  
  
“I’m afraid that I can’t associate with—“ Palliser started, obviously thinking Draco wanted to invite either his mentor or his father.  
  
“I know,” Draco said patiently. “One must preserve the reputation and the cleanliness of one’s house.”  
  
“Exactly!” Palliser beamed at him. Draco resisted the temptation to sneer, with effort.  _Fool. The Malfoys had built their first manor when your ancestors were starting to think caves might be just the thing to keep off the rain._  
  
“It’s Harry Potter I wish to invite.” Draco lowered his voice to a confidential tone and lowered his eyes to the floor. “He and I have bad blood between us, but I think it’s time he saw I’ve made a good effort at reintegrating myself into society and bringing beauty, instead of destruction, into the world.”  
  
Palliser, of course, ate it up. Like most people who weren’t pure-blood, he had a weakness for pretty rhetoric and often didn’t think to listen to the content of the words rather than the metaphors. He smiled mistily and clapped Draco on the shoulder. “Of course you may invite him. I’d thought of it myself, but I didn’t think he’d consent to come to the private viewing of a house. He’s so busy with public good works.” Fawning awe tinged his words.   
  
Draco held himself rigidly still, to give the spasm of spite and envy time to pass. Then he inclined his head. “I think he would come if I made it clear that this was a special favor. He likes to see people who fought on the wrong side of the war redeemed. And I have to admit, I presented him with small chance that he’d ever see that from me.” He smiled modestly.   
  
“Then let’s give him the chance!” Palliser smiled at him, but Draco could slip beneath the surface of his eyes without effort now and see the truth unfurling across his mind.  _Harry Potter! What a coup! The reporters are sure to come here and photograph the house if they know Potter spent time in it. I’ll be able to sell guided tours. There might be a picture with him, if I can coax him to hold still long enough…_  
  
Draco broke the Legilimency link gently and turned away, so that he could control his expression.  
  
*  
  
Draco strode quickly along the corridor that ran beneath Malfoy Manor, where no corridor had run five years ago. It was made of heavily flagstones, piled together and sealed with mortar that had the blood of dragons mixed into it. As Draco walked, small shadows darted and rippled beneath the surface of the stone, keeping pace with him; glittering heads with brilliant red eyes thrust out and flickered forked tongues in the air. They vanished beneath the walls again when no danger appeared.  
  
Draco smiled tightly. This corridor to  _his_  own secret room had been his first experiment in magical architecture as well as magical security, if one didn’t count the minor wards he’d cast to hide his collection of wanking material whilst still a teenager. He still didn’t believe he’d bettered it. Too many of his clients prized beauty over usefulness, and wouldn’t listen when Draco suggested combining both. But here he’d been able to follow his own tastes and desires.  
  
The corridor curved as it descended lower, moving in a spiral pattern, though one would have to ignore the subtle distortions of the walls and the overwhelming effect of the monotonous gray color on the walls to grasp that. Draco wasn’t above placing glamours and hexes that induced despair to guard his secret. There were worse traps as well, but they didn’t trigger as long as a stranger didn’t walk this corridor.   
  
At last, he halted before a door made of a single solid plate of polished cobalt, with a dragon’s head in the center. A circle of braided gold surrounded the dragon, and rubies marked its eyes. Draco closed his own eyes and stepped forwards, using the same brisk stride he’d used to cover the distance so far. He made sure to breathe noiselessly and to chase fear from the surface of his mind.  
  
Flames flickered around him, or at least their heat stroked the sides of his face and singed his hair. Twisting whispers hissed in his ears, promising treasures and the fulfillment of perverse lusts; listening to them meant insanity. The ground beneath his feet tipped more than once, propelling him forwards further than he would have liked or than seemed possible.  
  
But so long as he wasn’t afraid and he didn’t look, nothing here could hurt him.   
  
Draco opened his eyes when the whispers and the sensations of heat ceased. He stood now in a room he had copied from his father’s sitting room, still his definition of comfort. Cushioned chairs with wide, flat arms perfect for cradling a wineglass sprawled around the hearth, which blazed with a cheerful, self-sustaining fire no house-elf had to tend. The walls glittered and flickered, here mosaic, there tapestry, here polished wood, there black marble with veins of gold, providing stimulation for the brain or rest for the soul depending on the direction in which one looked. The ceiling was a perfect representation of the constellation Scorpius. Draco had liked the symbolism of the scorpion since childhood.  
  
And his collection occupied a series of glass cases in front of the most comfortable chair.  
  
Draco moved quietly forwards and dropped into the chair. At one point, the reverential hush which he always preferred to preserve here had embarrassed him. Then he had remembered that no one living would ever see this room but him, and he could act as he liked.  
  
He absorbed the collection in the cases with silent, greedy eyes. Photographs, most of them newspaper clippings, were the dominant objects, but he also had hairs, old robes, and the shards of a broken broom. Ancient letters lay on crisp beds of velvet, carefully guarded by strong preservation spells. Here and there were rings; at one point, the person who was the focus of Draco’s collection had tried them on in shops, when he still seemed to seriously entertain thoughts of marriage. There were souvenirs from the restaurants he’d eaten at most frequently, including some salvaged food that had known the touch of his lips. Cups, napkins, combs, quills, parchment—nothing was too small if it had at one point belonged, or come into contact with, or been in the same room with, Harry Potter.  
  
The centerpiece of the collection was the portrait in the largest glass case, on a platform of jade which lifted it above the rest of the room and let it observe the other objects. It was a portrait of Harry Potter, done privately and at great expense, so that it lived as much as any portrait in Hogwarts Castle ever had. The portrait showed an outdoor scene on a pitch, but as usual, the Harry Potter in Gryffindor Quidditch robes who stood there was hiding in one corner of the frame, his face twisted in a mixture of terror and loathing.  
  
Draco saluted him as he conjured a glass and Summoned a bottle of the wine he kept on a shelf in the corner for moments like this. Sipping after he poured, he closed his eyes and murmured, “There’s going to be something else to join you fairly soon.”  
  
The portrait would be glaring at him, because it always did that.  
  
“A victory is coming,” Draco said softly, opening his eyes, “that I’ve wanted for a very long time.”  
  
The portrait opened its mouth and screamed at him, though the Silencing Charms on the frame ensured he couldn’t hear a thing.  
  
Draco smiled. He permitted the pictured Potter to think that one day he would bring the real Potter here and keep him a prisoner forever, because that was amusing. But in reality, Draco had no use for permanent possession of his enemy. What he wanted was at once simpler and less palpable.  
  
Harry Potter had saved his life during the war, not once, but three times. He had taken Draco’s wand, defeated Voldemort with it, and then returned it with the same careless ease he did everything. He could raise more money for charity by playing in a single Quidditch game than Draco could earn by building three manor houses. He always, always won.  
  
Draco wanted to win just once, and crush and humiliate Potter in the process, so deeply that he could not grow back from the root.   
  
Just once, and then he could give up his collection and burn the portrait.  
  
He knew it, because he had succeeded at everything else he turned his hand to. Defeat was a heavy weight, but his vengeance would purge it. He would be free and able to turn to the rest of his life without thinking of Potter, whilst Potter would remember him every day.  
  
Draco drank his wine, and smiled.


	2. Fair Is Foul, and Foul Is Fair

Harry paused for a moment after Apparating, and stepped deliberately backwards so that he could enjoy the full effect of the Palliser House. He bumped into someone as he did so, but he hardly cared. Probably, that person would take one look at his face and back off with a handsome apology. There were advantages to being Harry Potter, and Harry had learned to accept some of them.   
  
Besides, the photograph he’d seen in the  _Prophet_  simply didn’t do the house justice.  
  
The front was a large façade with pillars, of course; there were some things that the new owners of manor houses seemed unwilling to give up, and the imitation of classical or Muggle styles was one of them. But on either side of the façade, Malfoy had added long shining sweeps of stone, undulating up and down like waves, with a silvery edge to them. Harry supposed they might actually be  _inlaid_  with silver. Tudor Palliser could certainly afford it.  
  
The doors were divided into three, instead of two, and folded or swooped instead of simply swinging open or shut. Harry had to grin when two guests, arriving late enough behind the last ones that they hadn’t seen how the doors worked, leaped aside with startled shouts as they lifted majestically out of the way.   
  
The upper floors of the house also swept and flowed instead of looming. Harry wondered for a moment why Palliser had wanted that—he had sounded, from his interview in the Prophet, the sort who would favor a house to impress and overwhelm—but then decided it must have been Malfoy’s design. And Malfoy had a reputation of persuading his clients to follow his suggestions, even if they’d marched into his office with something quite different in mind. Harry had seen his share of people leaving that office with puzzled frowns and consulting the plans in their hands as if they had materialized from nowhere.  
  
Ron would say that his hanging about outside Malfoy’s office indicated  _problems_. Harry was willing to believe that it did. So long as he didn’t actually intrude into Malfoy’s life, though, or attempt to claim his attention, he didn’t think the problem was serious. He knew he hadn’t a chance. He’d resigned himself to admiration instead of despair, that was all.  
  
On the other hand, Malfoy had sent him an invitation for tonight. And if that didn’t indicate he might be allowed to hope, what did?  
  
Harry took a deep breath and shook himself. Hanging about in the path to the house like a lovesick schoolgirl would accomplish nothing. And at least if he entered and Malfoy mocked or ignored him, he could get rid of the niggling hope that was making it uncomfortable to breathe at the moment.  
  
 _Always face it head-on_ , he thought, as he followed a long witch in a ridiculous veil and train into the house.  _That’s for the best, and it gets the pain, if there’s to be pain, over quickly._  
  
*  
  
Draco was chatting to several of Palliser’s more amiable and stupid guests in the great hall of the house when Potter entered the room.  
  
He always knew when Potter was near, always. It was nothing like a mystical connection between souls, as the romances Pansy read would have implied. It wasn’t even that he listened constantly for Potter’s voice or the sound of his step. (He couldn’t have heard such things immediately through the enormous crush of people Palliser had invited, anyway). What he recognized was at once more common and more subtle than that: the way that people stirred when Potter approached, the way they reacted to the “real, living hero”—as many people of Draco’s acquaintance were fond of repeating, never noticing the redundancy—among them.  
  
First came the abstracted eyes, though many of the people involved might continue their conversations, especially in a crowd like this, where as many came to be noticed as to notice. Then came a slight wave of turning heads, often caught before it could cause many ripples. And third was a murmur unlike any other in existence. Envy compounded it, and the inevitable cynical sneer that Potter could  _not_  be everything the papers represented him as, never mind his spectacular destruction of Voldemort. But there was also enough awe and belief to leaven the lesser emotions in spite of themselves.  
  
Draco hated having such thoughts. He hated noticing such things. He hated them with a passionate loathing that made him want to rip out eyes and force the idiots involved to choke on their own romance. But he would never allow such emotions to show in public.  
  
And this time, he was the one who had caused them, because he had invited Potter, which Palliser wouldn’t have dared to do, or couldn’t have pulled off successfully even if he did. That gave him a feeling of control that soothed his disgust.  
  
Draco turned, the crowd drawing apart between him and Potter as he called out the hero’s name, calmly, confidently. The imbecile stepped forwards, and those green eyes met Draco’s with a combination of wonder and wariness that poured soothing water over the soul-burns Draco had taken from him long ago.  
  
 _I fascinate him_. Draco gave his brightest smile, and Potter’s face shone with a tentative one in return.  _As the treasure fascinates the pirate, as the criminal fascinates the Auror._  
  
Still, as Potter put out his hand and Draco gracefully took it, there was another metaphor in his head, one he hoped to make true as soon as possible.  
  
 _As the snake fascinates the bird._  
  
*  
  
Lucius Malfoy put down his wineglass rather forcefully on one of Palliser’s delicate end-tables. The witch standing nearby gave him a pointed look and shifted away. Lucius murmured an apology without taking his eyes from the scene playing out before him.  
  
 _Draco, you are a fool._  
  
Lucius stepped back, drifting towards the wall. No one took any particular notice. He wore a glamour that shielded his features and made them resemble some cast-off Black’s; in fact, Draco had suggested he adopt the face from one of the portraits of her “beloved relatives” Narcissa had brought along to the Manor when he married her.  
  
 _Narcissa_ , sighed that second voice he seemed to carry around with him now, the whisper like the brush of a silken handkerchief.  
  
Lucius ignored it and continued moving gently away from the chattering and clucking flock until he had a good view of his son. Draco had particularly insisted he attend the party, though in disguise to appease Palliser’s sensibilities. Lucius was sure now that he had been intended to witness this meeting.  
  
 _And now the only question is why._  
  
Potter spoke with open friendliness in his face, and held out his hand to Draco first. Lucius frowned. His son would note the movement; he was less likely to see the friendliness. Lucius had long since realized that Draco could hardly control himself when Potter was mentioned, though about all other things he might be as cool as the stone Lucius was leaning against.  
  
 _He has a weakness for our widely beloved hero, and if I understood why, then I think I would possess the key to the gates of my son’s soul._  
  
Draco had a faint smile on his face as he let Potter clasp and press his hand. To someone who had known him from birth, that was not an effective mask. His mouth had a tightness it should not have possessed at a casual meeting, and he leaned slightly forwards, as if he wanted to emphasize his greater height to Potter. Such an effective tool of intimidation should never be displayed too openly, but after this length of time, Lucius doubted Draco would listen to him no matter how gently he tried to hint that. Draco was convinced that Lucius’s mistakes during the wars and during the years between, in the Dark Lord’s service before he officially announced his second rise, had disqualified him to offer advice.   
  
And now, when Lucius spent much of his time in his study among his deceased wife’s diaries and other effects, Draco was tempted to conceive of him as separated from the flow of important events altogether.   
  
 _Yet he wants me here to observe this change in his life, as he doubtless hopes to make it._  
  
Lucius bit the corner of his cheek sharply. He would not have worried so about his son if Draco had had more self-knowledge. That had been the second war’s gift to Lucius. He saw his faults, his failures, his limitations in so clear a light it made him wince. The time he spent trying to learn his dead wife’s mind was part of an effort to correct them.  
  
But Draco saw only his own strengths, and thought acknowledging a weakness was tantamount to falling prey to it.  
  
Lucius settled his back firmly against the wall. He was observing, yes, and at the moment he did not know which gesture would make the situation better and which would send it spiraling towards the floor of the abyss. He would retain his silence and his place for now. That was all anyone could ask of him.  
  
*  
  
Malfoy was handsomer in person than his photographs, or close encounters with the man imitating him, had led Harry to expect. He shone like the stone outside, pale hair tied with a silvery ribbon and drawn back from his face to lend the best emphasis to the clean cheekbones and long jawline. Harry stifled laughter as he realized how very well Draco Malfoy and Palliser House suited each other; it was a showcase for its architect, not its owner. Would Tudor Palliser ever realize that?  
  
 _And will you ever realize that you’re running into danger?_  
  
Harry started. He always did when Hermione spoke to him from a distance like that.  
  
“Is something wrong?” Harry thought he was probably imagining the concern in Malfoy’s tone, but even imagination had the power to make his heart beat faster.  
  
“Only that I remembered a report left undone,” Harry lied smoothly. No, he would never be as suave or controlled as Malfoy, but he had years of practice lying about reports to Kingsley—though usually about how advanced they were, not the other way around. “Thank you for inviting me here.”  
  
Malfoy smiled, and that changed his face in ways Harry had thought impossible; specifically, it brought warmth into those harsh and critical gray eyes. “You are the one who chose to favor me with your presence. I’m sure you must have more calls on your time than I do.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry managed to say, whilst his heartbeat increased and his eyes searched Malfoy’s face again for a meaning he didn’t expect to find.  _He said me, not us._  
  
 _That is not significant_ , snapped Hermione’s voice in his head.  _Honestly, Harry. Think about what self-interested motive is behind his invitation. That’s where you’ll find the trap lurking._  
  
Harry desperately wished he could rip the copper ring he was wearing from his finger and hurl it across the room. At one point, Hermione’s telepathic charm, which allowed her to speak to Harry and Ron across immense distances and read their more intense thoughts, had seemed like a wonderful idea. It would allow her to keep track of them when they ran into dangerous situations as Aurors and let them ask her questions they needed answers to. But she was even more suspicious of Malfoy than Ron was, which took some doing, and she was showing it in a  _highly inconvenient_  way.  
  
“I might be famous now,” Malfoy said, with a little laugh, “but I still don’t have the cachet of the Savior of the Wizarding World.” Spoken in his voice, the familiar, hated title sounded bearable. He picked up Harry’s hand and tilted the finger with Hermione’s charm on it to the light. “That’s a handsome ring.”  
  
Harry laughed, conscious that he was laughing too loudly and that his face had flushed in a way that made his attempt at normality a lie. And he could know that  _without_  Hermione speaking a warning in his head, thanks. “That? It’s not so handsome. No gold, no silver.” He nodded towards the room around them. “Nothing like the color scheme you’ve used here.” And then he felt like an idiot, because there was more silver on the outside of the house.   
  
But Malfoy’s smile was slow and pleased, as though no one who came up to him that evening had taken the time to make many specific comments. “Precious metals aren’t everything,” he said, and now his fingers were actually toying with Harry’s ring as if he would tug it off his finger.  _Yes, please_ , Harry thought, head filled with feverish imaginings of what would follow that. “I’ve always been fond of copper. It’s  _useful_ , in situations where silver and gold aren’t. Practical. One often needs more practicality to balance a surfeit of beauty.” He raised his eyebrows suddenly and looked down at the ring. “And it seems this little ornament you think isn’t handsome has a rather powerful charm on it.”  
  
 _He can sense the magic_? Hermione exclaimed, her voice fainter since the ring was hovering over Harry’s fingernail now.  
  
 _Of course he can sense the magic_ , Harry snapped back.  _He’s studied everything from Arithmancy to aura observation in order to make his houses more magical._  
  
Hermione’s voice sank and became quieter and fiercer, which was a good trick for something entirely silent in the first place.  _I don’t like this, Harry. He invited you too suddenly; he’s taking too violent an interest in you. Get out of there._  
  
Harry ignored her. He was confident he could handle himself around Malfoy, who had let the ring slide back onto Harry’s finger and was patiently waiting for an answer to his implied question, giving him a bright glance. His hands lingered, brushing Harry’s wrist and knuckles, and now and then his eyes darted down as if he were fascinated but didn’t want Harry to think he was.  
  
“The charm allows me to keep in contact with my friends,” Harry said. “It came in useful during the war, and it’s not bad now that I’m an Auror.”  
  
 _Harry!  
  
This charm is enough like other communication spells that he would have known I was lying if I pretended it was anything else. _  
  
Hermione went on to say other things, mostly about how irrational he became around Malfoy, but Harry ignored them as well. He’d dreamed and watched from afar for years, and now he was  _close_  to Malfoy, close enough to see the tiny flecks of blue buried in the depths of his gray eyes. Everyone who said that Malfoy looked exactly like his father was wrong. Harry, at least, would have known them apart by their breathing in a dark room.  
  
This was one evening out of a life that had known trouble and danger, but far too little fun. He could afford it.  
  
*  
  
Draco could feel his blood singing.   
  
He had waited so long for this. He had watched Potter and known what he ate and read the newspapers and paid others to tell anecdotes about him—which they were often happy to do, knowing that their meetings with the Famous Harry Potter were as close as most of them would ever come to royalty—but it was another thing entirely to have Potter’s skin under his, ripe for the tearing or the taking as he pleased.  
  
No one else in the room could possibly be equal in power to him at the moment. His hands trembled, and Potter stared at them, then looked back up at Draco with a faint smile of surprise. Let him. Let him think anything he wanted, so long as he didn’t laugh, and didn’t mock, and didn’t draw away.  
  
“A useful charm, then,” said Draco, and bent close as if considering the ring. It did intrigue him. The real purpose, though, was not to admire the braided copper that made up the dull piece of jewelry, but to let his breath travel over Potter’s skin. He shivered, like any other man, but he didn’t act offended, as someone who thought of Draco as repulsive would. He took a subtle step closer, in fact.   
  
Draco felt dizzy. Of course, this was all a calculated effect. Potter  _should_  admire. He  _should_  be hopelessly in love with Draco by the end of the evening, and he would be if Draco could manage it. It was the least he could do to repay all the time Draco had lavished on him in the last few years.  
  
And really, the debt was even bigger than the simple investment of time. Other people in wizarding Britain had to think of Magnificent Harry Potter, because he loomed so large compared to their petty lives. But Draco had wealth and fame and a career he enjoyed and that demanded a great deal of intellectual effort from him. He was no mindless worshipper, but a delicate and difficult convert. If Potter didn’t appreciate that, he was a fool.  
  
“You’re speaking as if it were useful to you.” Potter’s voice was high, and he seemed to realize it. He cleared his throat. “Why’s that?”  
  
“Why,” Draco said, letting his eyebrows climb to his forehead, “we wouldn’t want Britain’s most esteemed Auror, the one who keeps us safe from the monsters under our beds, to die, would we?”  
  
And he let his lips brush the back of Potter’s hand.  
  
Potter didn’t stare at him, enchanted. Instead, he grabbed Draco’s shoulders and threw him to the floor. The air ripped apart with the sound of screams, and Potter snapped his wrist down in a sharp motion that slid his wand out of his sleeve and into his palm. He looked down at Draco, probably forcing himself to ignore the way he straddled Draco’s hips.   
  
“So sorry to interrupt you,” he said, “but that criminal who looks like you is here and about to cause trouble.”  
  
And he rose in moments and launched himself into the crowd like a terrier after a rat—which, Draco thought in rage and confusion at the way Potter’s departure seemed to take the breath out of his lungs, was all the dignity he  _deserved_.  
  
*  
  
Lucius had been aware of the young wizard standing in the shadow of a pillar for some time. He had stared at Draco, but Lucius found it easy to accept the idea that he was merely paying his son the tribute he deserved (or at least that the echo of Narcissa’s features in his deserved). It wasn’t until he stepped out into the middle of Palliser’s party that Lucius’s attention became riveted. The young man was nearly a perfect copy of his son, and he did not wear glamours. Instead, his body hummed with the glow of powerful magic almost perfectly settled into place. He had used spells to acquire blond hair, gray eyes, and pointed features, and except for the wand he aimed at Draco and Potter and the lack of fluidity in his motions, Lucius might have been taken in himself.  
  
Lucius started to take a step forwards, though his limbs seemed weighted with water and he knew he would never reach the man in time.  
  
That didn’t matter, as it turned out, because Potter had twisted Draco to the ground and flung himself on top of his body. The spell the impostor launched started the back of Potter’s cloak burning, but he didn’t seem to care. Instead, he sat up, said something to Draco that made his face turn red, and then flew into the crowd.   
  
The man who thought he could imitate a Malfoy had already made some progress towards the door by judicious use of his elbows. When people didn’t get out of the way quickly enough for him, he lifted his wand and cast a crackling, buzzing yellow curse directly at one of the ornamental pillars.   
  
The pillar groaned, cracked down the middle, and shattered into shining chunks that dropped rattling into the spectators, who only now began to move. Potter dropped to the ground, rolling in a motion that simultaneously put out the fire on his cloak and brought his wand into the proper position.  
  
“ _Sustineo_ ,” he said, in the voice of a man who pronounced such spells every day.  
  
The air around him turned glassy and hardened, then flew up and away from him. In moments, it had split, and a series of small transparent pillars had grown up over the crowd, interposing themselves between the attending wizards and the falling pieces of stone. When they were hit, they quivered, bent back and forth until the threatening shards had settled to the floor, and then vanished like the air they were made of.  
  
For a moment, Lucius diverted himself wondering how Potter had known that he didn’t have to waste time or magical strength supporting the ceiling. Then Potter stood, wiped ashes and dust from his clothing and his hair, and turned to locate Palliser in the midst of the crowd.  
  
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I couldn’t prevent the interruption to your party, but I do hope that you’ll excuse it, since I also prevented further damage to your house.” He gave a quick smile and strode out the doors.  
  
Lucius could hear the buzzing moving through the crowd, and knew that another episode in the Potter legend was being born, one that would attribute half a hundred sayings more witty and gracious to him by the morning, and add half a dozen other more dramatic spells. From the expression on Draco’s face, he knew it, too, but he was the one who had chosen to take it as a personal insult.  
  
Lucius drifted back to the table that held his wineglass, picked it up, and sipped thoughtfully. This was the first time the impostor had attacked Draco directly. And that led to the question of what he might want, if not to besmirch Draco’s reputation. No one could doubt that Draco was an innocent victim if he was seen in the same place as his double.  
  
And  _that_  touched Malfoy honor, and perhaps Draco’s safety as well. Lucius was still a father if he was no longer a husband. He would protect his son to the best of his ability, though Draco was now the beloved fool.  
  
*  
  
Harry made a point of walking out onto the path that led to the house and checking for the assailant, though he had heard the crack of Apparition and knew it was pointless. The pillar had been a distraction—a deadly one. Harry chewed his lip thoughtfully. This was the first time their criminal had shown he was directly willing to take life, though some of his other crimes could have resulted in death if they had gone further.  
  
And he wanted Malfoy dead.   
  
Frowning, already composing his report to Kingsley in his head, Harry stepped back into the house. He was reluctant to leave Malfoy, but he suspected he had already ruined whatever chance he had by bolting after the attacker instead of staying to shelter him, as Malfoy would no doubt have prissily demanded. Harry grinned, imagining that conversation.  
  
He came to the place where he had left Malfoy, and was startled to see the man still sitting on the floor, his head bent and his arms wrapped around his torso. Harry’s first, awful thought was that he had pushed him too hard and he’d broken his ribs or his tailbone.  
  
 _Your concern for him is touching_ , Hermione said, voice full of light acid,  _but don’t you think you should leave him to the Healers even if so, and go report to Kingsley?_  
  
Harry slipped the copper ring off his finger and into his pocket. He would receive enough of a scolding when he returned to Grimmauld Place. Just now, he wanted to concentrate on the man in the room he most respected. He had looked up at Harry’s approach, and the people hovering around him had also drawn back; Harry could see that his face was pale and his forehead covered with a sheen of sweat.  
  
“Are you all right?” Harry asked.  
  
“I—I think—“ Malfoy took a deep, gasping breath and then, quietly and with dignity, fainted.   
  
Kneeling down next to him, Harry saw blue bruises beginning to appear on his throat, like the marks of strangling fingers.   
  
He reacted without thinking, snatching Malfoy up and racing towards the doors. Someone followed him, of course, but Harry’s attention was for the gravel in front of him, and the Apparition point. In seconds, darkness squeezed them both, bearing them away to St. Mungo’s.  
  
*  
  
Despite the uncomfortable jouncing motion of Potter’s arms and the intense concentration using wandless magic to cause the bruises on his throat took, Draco smiled.


	3. Come Not Between the Dragon and His Wrath

“How is he?”  
  
“Resting, Mr. Potter.” The Healer smiled and patted his arm. “Would you like to come in and see him?”  
  
“I can?” Harry hesitated on the threshold of Malfoy’s room, suspicious. He hadn’t even been able to visit Ron the last time he was in hospital, until he was smuggled in amidst a crowd of Weasleys. St. Mungo’s had become fairly strict about visiting rules applying to kin only after several assassinations during the war, which made Harry suspect he was being obliged only because he was Harry Potter.  
  
The Healer, a fairly young and pretty woman, blushed, which didn’t make him feel any better. “Well, you seemed so concerned,” she said, and her voice trailed off as she blinked at him. “Are you all right, Mr. Potter?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, and stepped into the room, before he could change his mind about not taking advantage of his name—which he had done many times since the war, though this use of it was rather different than encouraging contributions to orphanages—or she could change her mind about permitting him access.  
  
The room was as neat and as blank as any other in St. Mungo’s. The stark whiteness of the walls and sheets only further emphasized the pallor of Malfoy’s face and hair, which fanned around his head in a crown of tangled gold. Harry noticed that the marks of bruising had faded from his throat. He didn’t close his eyes and allow a sigh of relief to escape him, but it was a near thing.  
  
“The bruises came about as the result of wandless magic,” said the Healer. Harry started. He hadn’t realized she was still beside him. “Unfortunately, when that happens, we can’t track the person who did it. What we  _can_  do is charm the pain away and put on a spell to ensure that no one similarly attacks him whilst he’s here.”  
  
Harry smiled over his shoulder at her. “Thank you. And the fainting?”  
  
The Healer chuckled. “The charm taking over, and shock. Don’t tell Mr. Malfoy this, but the attack seems to have overwhelmed him. His heart was beating far too fast when you brought him in.”  
  
“Could that be dangerous?” Harry had to practically pin his eyes to her face so they wouldn’t wander over to Malfoy. He tried to focus on the sound of her voice, too, because Malfoy couldn’t speak to him right now anyway.  
  
“It shouldn’t be,” she said, and nodded reassuringly at him. “He’ll have the best care whilst he’s here, Mr. Potter.”  
  
“Someone did attack him once.”  
  
“The security precautions have been much improved.” The Healer’s voice had lost its shyness; she was moving onto ground she knew well, Harry thought, and that meant she felt less temptation to defer to the famous Harry Potter.  _Good_. Outside of deliberate showpieces and his job, he preferred to relate to people more normally, and to make them comfortable rather than apprehensive. “We’ll keep him so safe he won’t know he’s not at home, though doubtless—“ she flicked a wry glance around the room “—the accommodations aren’t what he’s used to.”  
  
Harry bit his lip to stop from protesting that that wouldn’t matter. To Malfoy, it might. “Thank you,” he said, and she finally nodded and left him alone to approach the bed.  
  
Harry conjured a chair without thinking; there was none in the room. He wondered for a moment where Lucius Malfoy was, but rumor said that he’d retreated completely into his Manor and led the life of a recluse. The news might not have reached him yet.  
  
And, terrible as it was, Harry couldn’t force himself to leave Malfoy’s bed and go inform his father about it.  
  
He let his gaze linger on Malfoy’s features, now that the man was no longer awake enough to object. Even more pointed than the photographs made them look; Harry reckoned Malfoy must deliberately adopt certain profiles to get the pictures the way he wanted. Well, Harry did the same thing. He preferred not to be photographed in the loo or with his hand down his pants, thanks.  
  
His eyes traveled to Malfoy’s hands, lying folded on the coverlet, as if the Healers had realized it would be an indignity to let them flop limply at his sides. Harry reached out, his own fingers hovering a few inches above Malfoy’s knuckles. He couldn’t quite bring himself to touch.  
  
He couldn’t quite believe he was this  _close._  
  
It was Malfoy’s hands, and not his face, which had first fascinated Harry. He had watched Malfoy’s architectural career with puzzlement at first, even a sense of disdain. Who did he think he was kidding? No one would ever forget what had happened during the war. He could build all the manor houses he liked, but he would still be a Death Eater in the eyes of the public. Harry felt a bit regretful about that, since he thought Malfoy didn’t deserve the blame he’d get, but he considered it inevitable. He had thought Malfoy understood that, too, and so to see him trying to evade that blame made Harry think poorly of his intelligence.  
  
Then the first manor, Pegasus Hall, was complete, and the  _Prophet_  published pictures of it and an interview with Malfoy that referred to his “dark and romantic past,” with no hint at all of what that past had actually entailed. Harry, irritated, Apparated to the site of Pegasus Hall one evening, determined to prove to himself that the wizarding public in general was shallow and far too forgiving of people who had let Death Eaters into Hogwarts and nearly killed Harry’s best friend.  
  
Then he had stood on the wide lawn and looked up at Pegasus Hall by the light of a full moon.   
  
The heavy white walls had shone, crouched there, displaying graceful arches of stone and a lightness of construction that hadn’t been visible in the pictures. Harry thought it looked like a dragon who might take flight at any moment. Here and there, a twist to the foundations, an arch to the façade as if it were a long serpentine neck, a ripple to the wings of the building that resembled  _actual_  wings, made him think Malfoy had had the same vision.  
  
Harry had stood still for a long time, staring. What finally brought him back to reality was his wand slipping from his hand and dropping to the ground with a clunk. Harry blinked and stooped to retrieve it without taking his eyes off the house, which meant he groped through dew-dampened grass for long moments before he found it.   
  
When he stood again, a net of wards had sprung up shimmering around the house, delicate linked chains of brilliant blue and green that reflected in the white walls like St. Elmo’s Fire in the waves of the sea.  
  
Harry lost part of his heart that night. Even stranger, he had known it at the time.  
  
The man who could create such beauty was not the weak one Harry had imagined, not that guilty but not blameless either, who was interesting only because of what Ollivander had told him about the connection between Malfoy’s wand and his. Malfoy had an artist’s hands, and an artist’s soul, too. Harry had watched him even more intently after that, because he wanted to understand how such capacity for greatness could coexist with the spite and the selfishness he  _knew_  he had observed in Malfoy during their years at school together.  
  
Each time he thought he started to understand the paradox, he found himself needing to do something else: collect another photograph or watch Malfoy more closely when he was at work in his office, trying to separate the grandeur in him from the grime it was mixed with.   
  
Slowly, he had come to accept that Malfoy didn’t have a split personality, that somehow both grime and grandeur came from the same source. And by then he was fascinated by the man’s attitude changes, sometimes humble, sometimes arrogance cloaked in a mask of humility, and the way he stood in pictures, and the way he worked for money and to specifications and yet stamped his own personality on every house he built. So many traits, all twined together. Harry never would have discovered the initial ones without having listened to Ollivander or going to see Pegasus Hall, though.  
  
It was vain for Hermione and Ron to tell him that great artists could still be awful people. Harry had lost track of the number of biographies Hermione had given him, exposing the hatreds and fears of writers, painters, scientists, and politicians. None of those people were living under Harry’s eye; he hadn’t seen their flaws firsthand, and he hadn’t seen how they grew past their flaws. Malfoy was different, because Harry had seen the worst and then the best. Harry could be  _sure_  the best was real.  
  
The houses carried pieces of Malfoy’s soul with them, and because they existed, Harry could not see him as evil.  
  
He didn’t know if he should ever hope for anything more than distant admiration, but that was enough to keep him watching by Malfoy’s side after the attack. And he remembered the way Malfoy had touched his hand and examined the ring earlier that evening, and had to rub his arms briskly as a rippling wave of gooseflesh traveled up them.  
  
Those hands that lifted stone into a solemnity and perfection comparable to music had entwined with his.  
  
Harry would have to be blind and deaf not to want more.  
  
*  
  
Draco lay with his eyes firmly shut and his body so relaxed that even the Healers had thought he was unconscious. It was a trick he had learned during the war; it allowed him to survive more than one Death Eater conversation they would have killed him for overhearing. He had practiced it even longer than he had practiced making the bruises on his throat appear with wandless magic.   
  
Both had worked.   
  
Draco could feel Potter’s presence next to the bed the way he would have felt the presence of a bonfire. Every shift and sigh and word to the Healers found their echo in Draco’s brain.  _Yes_ , he longed to say,  _yes, I knew you would act like this, I know you. I could pluck out your heart, and I know exactly how it would beat in the last few moments before it stopped._  
  
Then Potter reached out as if he would touch Draco, though in the end he didn’t. Draco could tell where the hand was at every moment. He was glad that no Healer was in the room then, because although he could keep his breathing and his face serene, his heartbeat had sped up enormously.  
  
He had expected to court a wary and suspicious Potter. Instead, he found one already opening up to him, watching over him as if he were a beloved friend, and anxious for his health. Of course, Draco had foreseen this reaction, too; he had merely not known it would appear so soon. As Severus would say, even a potion you knew well could sometimes surprise you when you varied the amount of an ingredient or the pace of your stirring.  
  
 _He’s drawn to me because he can’t help himself. I’m still the most significant person he’s ever known in his life, because I’m the only one who didn’t bow down to him and offer him either honor or paranoid fear. Even Severus had that unfortunate interest in him because he was friends with Potter’s mother. Because he’s Potter, he wants to know why I don’t feel those extreme reactions._  
  
Draco badly wanted to open his mouth and run his tongue along the edge of his front teeth in anticipation, but that would spoil his perfect rendition of a helpless patient. He must give Potter a chance to play the hero. The impostor who wanted to hurt him and smash his reputation was no plan of Draco’s, but Draco was not averse to using him. It would rouse Potter’s protective side all the more quickly.   
  
 _I’ll have him. I’ll have him even more thoroughly if I just remain still for a little while, and let him speculate about how badly I was hurt.  
  
The things I’ll do. The vengeance I’ll take on him. People will talk about it for years. He won’t be able to look anyone in the face again. Maybe he’ll commit suicide—_  
  
But Draco stopped that train of thought. He’d never been comfortable with the notion that Potter would escape the grief and pain Draco would cause him that easily. No, Draco must leave him with the will to live, if only because he wanted to stare after Draco in hopeless bewilderment.  
  
 _Become fascinated with me, Potter. Become bound to me. Then you won’t die as long as I live, but you won’t escape my shadow, either._  
  
*  
  
Lucius stepped out of the Floo at the Manor and removed his glamour with a grateful sigh. Actions he had once taken without a pause for thought, like disguising himself, unaccountably irritated him now.  
  
 _Or not so unaccountably_ , said that voice like a silken handkerchief in the back of his mind.  _Before, you knew they were for the good of the family the way you know winter is cold. And then Narcissa died, and you found out how differently she thought, and now you can’t help second-guessing yourself, as if that would give her opinion another chance to live._  
  
Lucius scowled and ducked into the corridor outside the anteroom, absently handing his cloak to a house-elf on the way. The wing he had moved into after Narcissa’s death was the western one, cramped and small and dark in many of its rooms and connections between its rooms, with windows that looked out on pine trees and a stretch of grass that always appeared brown no matter the season. (Family legend said an ancient Octavius Malfoy had immolated himself there, and the grass refused to grow in mourning). Draco rarely visited it, and Lucius had assumed that he would be alone now.  
  
Instead, Severus stood waiting for him in the corridor, leaning against the wall with all the poise of a carrion crow. Lucius clenched his hands into fists and willed his bounding heart to slow.  
  
“Yes, Severus?” His voice was brittle, and he knew he would not be able to make it sound natural. “You wanted something?”  
  
“Where’s Draco?” Severus’s eyes traveled to the door Lucius had left open, as if he had really expected that Draco would take the same Floo home as his father.  
  
“He played a nasty trick on Harry Potter and his gracious host and got the hero to believe he’s sick.” Lucius ran a hand through his hair, more irritated by the remembrance of what he had seen Draco do than by the fact that Severus had startled him. “He’ll be fine, of course. When is he ever anything other than fine?” He paused and took a long breath. One thing he and Severus never agreed on since the war was what Draco should make of himself and how much time he had to do it in before he would become irredeemably a small and shallow man. Lucius thought he could do much better than he was; Severus had declared that Draco had surpassed all his expectations by not retreating into the house and sulking. Lucius, who could read those words well enough as applying to more than one person, chose not to open the argument often.   
  
“You are sure he was not injured?” Severus cleared his throat. Of course, he could not admit he was worried about Draco without criticizing Lucius’s powers of observation at the same time.  
  
“There was an unexpected attack,” Lucius admitted. “That same fellow we’ve been seeing in the papers, by all accounts, trying to use Draco’s name and face. But Potter saved him from it. And after that I watched Draco, not Potter. He didn’t have a wound on him. And he had that small, secret smile he gets when he’s plotting, at least until Potter came back from fruitlessly hunting the criminal. Then Draco pretended to faint. Yes, he’ll be fine. I simply wish he knew what he was playing at.”  
  
Severus started to answer, and then paused. “The wrong pronoun, perhaps?” he asked.  
  
Lucius shook his head and strode past Severus towards the door of the study where he sat to relax—brood, Severus would call it—and think about Narcissa’s diaries when he was not actually reading them. It was a dark room, made of obsidian and wooden paneling that had been stained black by the use of judicious Smoke Spells. Above the fireplace, the hearth of which took up a third of the room, hung an empty portrait frame with a chair in it. Lucius regarded it moodily for a moment, then sat down before the hearth. A house-elf appeared at once, lit the fire, vanished, and reappeared again with a glass of white wine for Lucius. Lucius sipped it and closed his eyes. Dragon’s Bane. It had been his favorite wine even before Narcissa’s death. In some things, at least, he hadn’t changed.   
  
“I know perfectly well what Draco’s doing,” he said. “The same thing he always did in school. Trying to win the Potter boy’s attention.”  
  
Severus laughed sharply. “You should leave him to it. Either he will never succeed and use the failure to lash himself on to new heights of achievement, or he will succeed and have what he’s always wanted.” He paused. “A true Slytherin wants such things for the children he has in his care.”  
  
Lucius opened his eyes to offer Severus another glare. At times he didn’t know why he had taken the Potions master into his house. No matter how skilled at brewing, no matter how good a friend he had been to Draco after they had fled Hogwarts together at the end of the boy’s sixth year, he could not forgive Lucius what he saw as lapse after lapse in his principles and his love for Draco. Constant sarcasm was not Lucius’s idea of a fit trait in his companion. He preferred someone who could offer unexpected stabs of wit but would let him have the mastery when he preferred.  
  
 _Someone like her._  
  
Lucius’s hand did not tighten around the glass and shatter it into fragments, because he had that much self-control. “Draco does not know when he goes too far,” he said. “He invited me to the showing of this house tonight because, he hinted, I would see something special. That special thing was his meeting of Potter, who had come to the party on his specific invitation, from the talk I heard around me. Tell me, Severus, does a young man who is self-confident about his victories and able to say what they’re worth to him need his father’s eyes to give such a victory value?”  
  
Severus flicked a hand. “I doubt your eyes are the sole value of the thing for Draco. He probably wanted to silence your doubts on the subject of Potter by letting you watch as he captured him.”  
  
Lucius choked on his wine and barely managed to set it down on the broad arm of his chair before he began to chuckle. The laughter felt like it tore something as it raced through his chest, but Lucius kept it up anyway. It had been a long time since he had the chance to see Severus’s face freeze in such an offended expression.  
  
When he finally chose to put himself under control, he said, “Draco can’t capture Potter without being captured by him. I know what he feels, Severus, and he  _doesn’t_. That is what worries me. If he had chosen to mesh himself in obsession or hatred, counted the costs beforehand and liked the equation those numbers produced, I would not interfere. But he has no idea of the depth of his feelings for Potter. He thinks this is a small part of his life, and that he won’t change if he destroys the man. He  _will_. Pardon me if I find such a lack of self-knowledge in my heir distressing.”  
  
Severus snorted softly. “Potter has few exemplary qualities,” he said. “I would count luck first among them. Draco will come to know him better, and find how shallow he really is, how unworthy of an obsession. You need not fear Draco falling in love.”  
  
“I fear Draco falling,” said Lucius. “And Draco does not have the depth of soul to admit he was wrong about staking so many of his emotions on someone shallow. Instead, he will try to build Potter up into a worthy foe even if he isn’t, and talk himself into a headlong tumble before he realizes it.”  
  
Severus stood still for some time, his eyes half-shut. “It is true that hatred can be as consuming as love,” he said.  
  
“Only as consuming?” Lucius arched an eyebrow. One of his few advantages over Severus was that the man had spent his first days in the Manor under the influence of powerful healing potions, recovering from the Flaying Curse that had almost killed him. Lucius had learned many secrets from Severus then, including how much of his bitterness had stemmed from insults hurled by schoolboys twenty-five years ago.  
  
Severus had an unattractive manner of flushing, all over his brow and down the sides of his face in splotches, as if he had broken out into fever. Lucius picked up his wine and sipped again, enjoying the equal footing he had reestablished in the conversation.  
  
“If you fear so much for your son in Potter’s clutches,” said Severus at last, his voice clipped, “you might extricate him. Go to St. Mungo’s, where Potter has doubtless taken him in a fit of misguided heroism, and bring him home.”  
  
Lucius shook his head. “Draco also won’t brook my guidance. I might succeed in alerting Potter, but I couldn’t keep Draco away from him, and he would probably spin some story to Potter about how his dreadful father is harassing him so he can’t repent and become a paragon in British wizarding society the way he wants to be.”  
  
“So you’ll stand back, shaking your head and clucking your tongue sadly, and watch your son dash himself to his death?” Severus brought his head back in the exact posture that the Dark Lord’s Nagini had once held before she struck. “I did not know you had a hobby of repeating history.”  
  
Lucius stood up so suddenly he knew he had no chance of feigning coolness. Instead, he simply stared at Severus until his eyes lowered, and said quietly, “And who did not watch Bellatrix, so that such history was possible in the first place?”  
  
Severus turned and walked from the study.   
  
Lucius sat down, staring down at the fallen wineglass, and the wine that had soaked into the carpet. His fingers twined together, and he could feel them shaking like an old man’s. It had not been his fault that Narcissa died. He had seen her taking risks to protect her son, but he had never thought she would do—that.  
  
 _You never knew her_ , said the silken-handkerchief voice.  _As you are learning now._  
  
But Severus might be right about one thing, much as Lucius hated to admit it. Perhaps Draco would destroy himself as thoughtlessly, for the gratification of his passions. Lucius might be able to interfere in such a way that Draco wouldn’t sense his hand and therefore work against it for the mere pleasure of foiling his father.  
  
“I will take care of Draco,” he whispered aloud into the silence of the study. “Even if he doesn’t want me to.”  
  
He spent some time watching the empty portrait, but no one walked into the frame. 


	4. Not Wisely But Too Well

“Potter.”  
  
Harry started. He must have fallen into a doze, or at least a trance, not to have noticed when Malfoy awakened. He looked up now, and found the other man’s eyes fixed on him. Malfoy looked as if he didn’t know whether to be annoyed, embarrassed, relieved, or grateful.   
  
“Yes?” Harry asked quietly.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Malfoy looked in several directions, as though expecting to see a pack of Weasleys ready to pounce on him. “Why hasn’t my father been informed?”  
  
“He may have been,” said Harry, leaning back in the chair and trying not to look too intently at Malfoy’s hands. His wrists flexed and fell in strong, sensual motions that made Harry’s mouth dry out. He had caught, more than once, a glimpse of Malfoy through the windows in his office as he bent over a piece of parchment and scribbled plans for a new manor house. The difference between seeing that through glass and seeing it so close now was like the difference between being told about chocolate and eating it. “I didn’t go and inform him. I brought you to St. Mungo’s from the party and I’ve been watching over you since.”  
  
“Why?” Malfoy raised his eyebrows at him. “Surely you don’t think that man, whoever he was, will try something again so soon after the last attempt?”  
  
“We can’t be sure,” said Harry, making a quick decision that he could tell Malfoy the relevant particulars of the case, since he was involved in it now. Not everything, of course. It would be a poor Auror who let details escape into a place where the criminal’s ears could hear them. “We don’t understand him, frankly. At first we thought he only wanted to smear your name. You must have read the stories of him letting dangerous magical creatures free, making loud speeches in denunciation of Muggleborns, and trying to steal those items from Knockturn Alley.”  
  
“Quite.” Malfoy grimaced. “Someone  _would_  begin to resurrect my past just as I start to emerge from its shadow.”  
  
“Many people do seem eager to believe it,” said Harry, barely restraining the impulse to tell him no one in the Auror department did. Telling him that would require explaining about the connection between their wands and Harry’s ability to sense Malfoy’s. “I don’t, but then, I like to think I know you better than most people do.”  
  
Malfoy laughed. The sound was sharp and lashing, like the bark of a hound eager on a hot scent, but Harry could hear the old sorrow behind it. He hadn’t spent so many hours observing Malfoy for nothing. “Because we were old school chums together?” he said, and curled his lip. “Don’t make me laugh. My throat still hurts.” He winced and lifted a hand to his neck, stroking the places where the bruises had been with light fingertips.  
  
“I meant since then,” said Harry. He could choose to be less than cautious with his personal infatuations if he wanted. It wasn’t the same thing as revealing Auror business. And Hermione would no doubt make a fuss if he still wore the ring, because she wanted to protect him and didn’t trust Malfoy, but the ring had remained tucked firmly in Harry’s pocket. “I’ve—kept up with you.”  
  
Malfoy watched him with sideways, speculative eyes. “Out of suspicion.” His voice wavered, implying that he was willing to be convinced otherwise. Harry had rarely wanted to do something more.  
  
“At first,” Harry said. “And then I realized how many beautiful things you were doing.”  
  
Malfoy blinked at him and turned to meet his gaze directly. “Wouldn’t you despise what I’m doing? Building manor houses for the pretentious rich who can afford them and want to pretend they’re pure-bloods?”  
  
“I would despise it if you were only doing it for wealth,” Harry said. His heartbeat had sped up, but he doubted Malfoy could tell. He was sitting down, after all, and his voice and face remained calm. “But you’re an artist. I can tell how much these houses matter to you, even the ones where the owners would be happy with a malformed copy of the latest Muggle fashion. I can admire an artist, in the same way I could admire Professor Lupin when he taught Defense Against the Dark Arts, or Viktor Krum when he played Quidditch.”  
  
*  
  
Draco’s startlement had already melted into satisfaction, and a bit of impatience with himself for failing to anticipate this reaction. Of course Potter would have to wonder why Draco had decided to become an architect instead of huddle in the Manor with his father. That would fit the spoiled schoolboy he’d always known, whose pride was more important to him than anything else.  
  
But Draco had changed. And Potter had become a bit of an aesthetics expert. Draco wondered for a moment who had taught him that, what lover, because Potter had always been so physical that he wouldn’t have learned such an appreciation for beauty anywhere else.  
  
But Potter’s past lovers didn’t matter. Convincing Potter to take the last few steps closer to Draco did.  
  
He looked down at his blankets and let himself blush. Of course, he cleared his throat harshly, because Potter wouldn’t expect him to  _like_  being embarrassed. “I wouldn’t call myself comparable to any of the great architects of the past,” he said. “Morgana Hundel, for instance—“  
  
“I don’t care about them. I care about you.”  
  
Draco jerked his head up and stared at Potter. Luckily, his real reaction and the rehearsed one would be the same thing this time.   
  
Potter had turned a brilliant red himself. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I mean, I don’t care about their work,” he said. “I barely know their names, and I’ve never seen anything extraordinary in their houses when I’ve looked at them. I saw you become what you did, and I could connect with the beauty in your houses from the first time I looked at it.”  
  
Awkwardness, repeated words and all, the confession made Draco feel as if he were holding a mask sculpted of solid gold.  
  
“Then—“ Draco said, and had to stop speaking for a moment, because gladness was choking him. That was all right; Potter would take it as only a sign that other emotions had overwhelmed him. “Then I might be able to tell you what I can’t tell anyone else, even my father.” He shivered and shook his head. “In the last few years he’s become a stranger to me. All he ever does is brood on the past and wonder what he could have done to change it, instead of trying to move forwards the way I’m doing.”  _There. If my father thinks of trying to warn Potter off because he’s “concerned” over what he likes to call my “obsession,” that ought to put paid to Potter’s listening to him._  
  
“Of course,” said Potter. “You might tell me anything.” He was leaning forwards, and there was a tremulousness in his face that made Draco want to scream aloud with triumph. For the first time, Potter looked vulnerable to him, to something Draco might do, rather than to harm in general. When Draco hurt him, he would endure all the more pain because of who it was. Then Potter seemed to realize the way he looked and leaned back in the chair, clearing his throat again. “I mean,” he said, almost stammering, “Aurors are trained to take confessions, but also to hold what other witnesses say to them in absolute secrecy. You don’t need to be afraid I’ll tell someone else what you say to me.”  
  
 _Oh, Potter. Such a Gryffindor. It doesn’t become you to vow anything but the truth_. If Draco could have any thoughts about Potter tinged with fondness, it would have been these, the ones that pointed out Potter’s weakness so conclusively. Draco leaned forwards and lowered his voice, in part to disguise the husk of joy in it. “Good,” he said. “I’ve been afraid of this impostor for some time now. I wondered if he wasn’t only trying to smear my reputation but to end my life.” And he had sometimes wondered that. It was Potter’s fault if he took that statement to imply that Draco was  _worried_.  
  
“Why?” Potter’s eyes were enormous. “I can see why you didn’t approach the Ministry. We haven’t exactly treated anyone with your last name fairly in the past.” He smiled grimly, probably remembering the months Lucius had spent in Azkaban before the Wizengamot deigned to notice that he’d spent most of the war as a quiet spectator, and even managed to help a few of Voldemort’s prisoners to escape. “But what did he do to threaten you specifically?”  
  
“I’ve received my share of odd owl post since the war,” Draco said. “But lately, there have come a few death threats that aren’t in the old style.” Those letters didn’t actually exist, of course, but Draco could “create” them easily enough. And they would be just the bait Potter needed to feel sorrier for him.  
  
Potter winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve got some like that myself. You can almost get used to living with your life constantly in danger, and then something changes and you realize you were only used to one  _version_  of that danger.”  
  
Startled, Draco stared at him for long moments before he realized that Potter would of course have received threatening post from fans who wanted to be with him, as well as the Death Eater associates who blamed him for killing their Lord. But he spoke as if the problem had continued for more than a few months. The  _Prophet_  had never indicated it had. Perhaps they’d simply lost interest in the story?  
  
Draco felt a flash of rage at the idea. Yes, he had to indulge the people who fell for Potter’s fame or his deeds; they couldn’t know that the debt he owed Draco was older than all that. But threats by post were too personal, too much of an intrusion on the territory Draco had claimed for himself. At least they could challenge Potter with wands in their hands and fight him on ground that Potter was a master of. Draco had chosen intrigue as his weapon partially because of Potter’s lack of skill at it.  
  
“Malfoy?”  
  
He was staring, Draco realized. He shook his head and continued, “He only sent me three letters, and it’s possible that they didn’t come from him. But he spoke of how my face would be torn soon, and how all the success I’d achieved since the war was worth nothing, because he would make it be worth nothing. Those letters came in the space of three weeks soon after he started committing crimes with my face, and I hadn’t received any for a year before that. The timing is too much of a coincidence.”  
  
With satisfaction, he sat back and watched Potter lap the lies up. The more hooks Draco had in his mind, the easier he would be to control.  
  
*  
  
Harry was inwardly swearing at himself for not suggesting that Kingsley speak to Malfoy sooner. Of course the impostor had to have some sort of personal animosity to Malfoy to persist for so long; he’d been committing crimes the same way for more than seven months, instead of switching to another persona when he realized that his crimes weren’t getting Malfoy arrested. But partially because the Aurors were more likely to treat Malfoy as a suspect than an innocent victim, Harry had always persuaded Kingsley not to request an interview.  
  
Of course Malfoy would be in danger from that animosity, and Harry wanted to fling curses at the mere notion of the bloke they were chasing writing threatening letters. Now they had an actual attack to go with it. The man was growing desperate, perhaps simply for attention, and had stepped up his methods. Merlin knew what he would do next if not stopped.  
  
“I’ve thought—“ Malfoy began, and then paused, looking away.  
  
“What?” Harry asked at once. He felt he knew every line of that mobile face after watching it as Malfoy slept. He knew that that twitch around the mouth meant something important.  
  
“I’ve thought of asking for protection from the Ministry,” Malfoy whispered. “But could I trust the person assigned to me any more than I could trust the man impersonating me?”  
  
Harry leaned forwards. If fate had taken many things away from him, he thought, his parents and a normal childhood and then a life free from the taint of celebrity afterwards, at least it had given him this.  
  
“Do you think you could trust me?” he asked.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes fixed on him. He appeared to be giving the question serious consideration, something Harry was grateful for. Agreeing too quickly would have made Harry wonder about his motives.  
  
*  
  
 _He fell for it. Oh, Potter, your struggles as you try to get out of the trap are going to be so beautiful._  
  
Draco started thoughtfully at Potter for a long moment, then thoughtfully at the hospital bed. He cleared his throat as if he were going to speak, and then shook his head.  
  
“You don’t think you can trust me?” Potter’s voice was flat and gentle. If he was disappointed, he was hiding it well, but Draco thought that was only because he wasn’t looking into Potter’s eyes at the moment. He would see confusion and hurt if he were.  
  
“I think I might be able to,” said Draco. “But the Ministry would never let you protect me, would they? Not their top Auror, whom they need for so many other cases. And I’d want protection at both my office and the Manor. I know I’d be reluctant to let someone I cared for live in the home of a notorious Death Eater.”  
  
Potter laughed. Draco frowned. The sound caused an involuntary reaction in him, a jerk below his waist as if his cock was stirring. That would have to be attended to. Draco couldn’t have a sexual relationship with Potter until he had decided if that was the best means of revenge or not.  
  
“To be honest, this particular case of your impostor has been driving Kingsley mad,” Potter murmured, leaning forwards until Draco could feel his breath on his cheek. He was sure Potter had no idea how close he had got, or that he would be able to pull away even if he knew. “We simply can’t find any leads, and we can’t tell what his motives are, so we can’t know where he’ll appear next. The  _Prophet_  mocks the Auror department for it when it isn’t busy trying to get out of the lawsuit the parents of the Child Catcher’s victims brought against it. I think Kingsley might be willing to let me go for a few days if it means that we’d be more likely to solve the case.”  
  
“But having me with you might make you less likely to solve the case,” said Draco. “It’d be depriving the Ministry of your investigative skills, and maybe the attacker, whoever he is, would back off when he realized I had protection.” Potter would be suspicious if he raised no objections and didn’t sound as if he were half-reconsidering his own idea. Besides, it was true that the Aurors couldn’t find their own arses without Potter. He had no particular merit, he didn’t deserve all his success, but his peculiar luck seemed to turn up the trails of criminals more often than not.  
  
“Having you safe would be a good thing,” said Potter. “And Kingsley might ask me to remain in hiding at first, under a Disillusionment Charm, so that our enemy wouldn’t know you had protection. He’d be likely to reveal himself then.”  
  
Draco drowned a growl of discontent. He wanted as many people as possible to see Potter following at his heels like a tame dog. But he could put up with temporary inconveniences to achieve his grand victory over Potter. God knew he’d been doing it long enough. It wouldn’t do to make his eagerness cause him to fail in sight of the goal.  
  
“If you think he’d agree,” he said, looking up, “maybe you could suggest it.”  
  
*  
  
Harry was sure he could have taken down the impostor without his wand just then, if the bastard had chosen to appear in the room. The relief and the triumph of Malfoy’s agreement made his feet lighter and his magic surge within him.  
  
“I will,” he said. “But it would help if I could explain things in more detail to Kingsley. Do I have your permission to tell him about the threatening letters?” In reality, he planned to do so anyway, because it was important to the investigation, but without Malfoy’s permission, he would make sure Kingsley confined the information to those Aurors who could keep silent about it.  
  
Malfoy swallowed. Harry wondered if he was thinking about the people—and Harry was sure they existed—who would pay for information like this. Harry had to keep from snarling as he thought of them. He wanted to stand guard over Malfoy at the moment and protect him from the whole world. He should be left to create art in peace, without having to worry about someone trying to steal his reputation.  
  
 _You want more than that_ , laughed his own conscience.  
  
Harry ignored that. Yes, he did, but it would be wrong to press Malfoy for closeness when he’d just barely survived an attack. It would be enough to stay in the same home with him, and watch his houses come to life under his hands in the office.  
  
“You can tell him,” Malfoy whispered. “Just—don’t spread it widely, please?” He looked up at Harry with appealing eyes. “And if I answer questions about it, then I would like you to come with me.”  
  
Harry nodded. He would have reached out a hand and placed it on Malfoy’s arm, but he was sure it would shake and give him away.  
  
 _If Hermione and Ron could see him at the moment, they would have to admit he’s more than a soulless monster_ , he thought.  _They love me, I know they want the best for me, but the prejudice against the Malfoy name is still strong in them._  
  
*  
  
Draco kept his eyes tamely on the floor as Kingsley Shacklebolt questioned him. Potter had asked Draco if he was well enough to leave St. Mungo’s and go to the Ministry, but Draco had refused, thinking Shacklebolt would probably be more powerful on his own ground (and that he might also have access to spells that would facilitate the detection of lies and other tricks, which would be noticeable if he tried to cast them in St. Mungo’s).  
  
The Head Auror took a seat opposite him and frowned. “Harry tells me that you’ve asked for protection, and why,” he said bluntly. “I wanted to ask you some questions before I simply assigned my best Auror to you for an indefinite period.”  
  
Draco saw Potter shift uneasily. He was standing near the door; he’d offered to leave during the interview, but Shacklebolt had said it wouldn’t be necessary, and Draco preferred him nearby, so that he could intervene, as he doubtless would, if Shacklebolt said something too awkward for Draco to handle.   
  
 _He is so much the same_ , Draco thought, with a hunger he couldn’t name directly. He would have to watch that, too. He did not want unknown emotions upsetting his plans.  _Uneasy under praise. He revels in it, I know he does. I suppose the modesty is a show he’s kept up for the masses so long it’s become instinctive._  
  
“How threatening would you say the letters you received were?” Shacklebolt asked.  
  
Draco allowed himself to glance over his shoulder as if he suspected that the attacker was behind him. When he turned back, Shacklebolt had a tinge of sympathy about his eyes, and Potter looked as if he had a hard time not stepping away from the door and reaching for Draco.  
  
“The first was more odd than anything else,” said Draco, and shivered. “Some phrases about tearing my face, tearing it to shreds and then burning the shreds. I suspected it was from a disgruntled Death Eater and Vanished it. As you no doubt know,” he added, arching his neck a little, “not many former Death Eaters have achieved the same success I have.”  
  
“I know,” said Shacklebolt grimly, in a tone that made it clear to Draco he wouldn’t have achieved that success if Shacklebolt had been able to intervene. “And the other two letters?”  
  
“Threatened my success,” Draco said. “They were full of threats against my business, and then the same weird sentence about tearing my face away, which was all that told me they were from the same writer. The hand changed each time.” He saw Shacklebolt and even Potter come alert, as if his lie had told them something important.  _So sorry not to be of help to your investigation, he thought. If Potter had ever been of help to me, perhaps I wouldn’t need to do this_. “I Vanished those as well. My father would react—badly—if he saw them lying about.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “Ever since my mother’s death, he’s been a bit less than sane.”  
  
Potter nodded, as if that confirmed an old theory of his. Shacklebolt was staring at him, obviously deep in thought. “And you think Harry could protect you against these things?”  
  
“He was very impressive tonight,” said Draco, and let his voice warm, though his eyes only stole to Potter for a moment. He was staring at the floor again. Draco wondered how long it would take that modesty to wear away when they were alone together. Surely he must have some pride in his lovemaking skills, to keep the lovers he’d had; no one would want someone who cringed and fawned all the time.  
  
Draco forced his brain to move on from that, though, because dwelling on Potter’s past lovers was like swallowing vinegar. “Not only did he manage to save my life, when I had no idea this enemy was behind me, but he’s quick of insight. When the impostor knocked down a pillar, Potter realized at once that he had to protect the crowd from the falling stone, not hold the roof up. The only way that could happen would be if he’d looked at the pillars and known they were ornamental from the first.”  
  
Potter flushed brilliantly. Draco knew this “insight” came from Potter’s close attention to his houses, and so did Potter. Draco tipped Potter a slow wink as Shacklebolt looked away to write something down, as much saying,  _I won’t tell if you won’t_. Potter looked reluctantly enthralled.  
  
“And you won’t accept anyone else from the Ministry?” Shacklebolt said.  
  
“I haven’t seen that anyone else would risk their lives for me,” Draco said shortly. Though his delight in finally getting close to Potter outweighed it, he did feel some irritation that someone had nearly killed him that evening. A trained Auror at his back would be no bad thing. But someone like Weasley? Of course not. He couldn’t accept that.   
  
Shacklebolt settled back in his chair with a sigh. “Harry made other arguments when he visited me, even more convincing,” he said. “Very well. Harry, this is your case for the immediate future. Make sure that you act as a bodyguard for Malfoy, and accompany him _everywhere_.” He gave Potter a glance that Draco didn’t know the significance of.  
  
But Potter apparently did, because his lips thinned before he nodded. “Yes, sir.”  
  
 _Does that refer to some past mistake?_  But Draco decided it didn’t matter if it did, because he had everything he needed: Potter willingly at his side, giving him time to work out plans.   
  
Draco had known for years that he needed this. What he did not yet know what he should do. Immense, rich vistas of vengeance opened out in front of him.  
  
And Potter was gazing at him trustingly. Draco smiled back, ignoring Shacklebolt’s presence in the room, and effortlessly concealing the thought running through his mind at that moment, which was,  _Do I start with wrapping my hands around your heart or your soul?_


	5. Masters of Their Fates

“It’s grander than I expected,” Potter said, craning his neck back to stare at the ceiling.  
  
Draco busied himself with brushing imaginary soot from his robes; the house-elves kept the Manor’s fireplaces free from any such inconveniences, but Potter could not be expected to know that. “Some of my ancestors had rather a fetish for grandeur, yes,” he said in a bored tone. He sneaked a look sideways at Potter and rolled his eyes. The fool was  _still_  gaping at the ceiling, tilting his head back until Draco knew he would fall over and slam his head into the mantle. “I would have done a better job if I had designed this house.”  
  
Potter turned towards him, shaking his head like a Crup awakened from a dream. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “A vault like this is impressive in its own way.” He gestured again to the ceiling of the entrance hall, which rose above them in a perfectly smooth silvery dome, without ripple or mosaic to soften it. “And I can see the influence in the ceiling of that hall at Palliser House.”  
  
Draco paused for a moment. To be honest, he had not expected Potter to be that observant, or to have learned as much about architecture as it seemed he had, paying attention to Draco’s job.  
  
Still, being observant about architecture didn’t mean he was observant about anything else. Draco smiled at Potter and watched his face soften. He never noticed the emotions lurking behind Draco’s smile, that was clear.  
  
“We haven’t yet discussed where you should stay at night,” Draco said, and opened the door between two nearby pillars. Potter blinked and followed him through with a few wondering glances at the doorframe. At least he hadn’t noticed that, Draco thought with a sense of relief he immediately had to sneer at. What, was he actually  _worried_  Potter would see the trap closing in around him before he was snared?  _Don’t be ridiculous. You know Potter better than that_. “I can conjure a second bed in my room, there’s enough space for that, but I don’t know if you would feel comfortable sleeping next to me.”  
  
He lowered his voice as he spoke the words and had the satisfaction of seeing the alert turn of Potter’s head, as he scanned the room for possible threats, falter. He swallowed and then looked back at Draco. “I—I wouldn’t mind that,” he said. “It would be more effective at preventing an attack in your own chambers than my guarding you outside the door would.”  
  
 _Chambers? Really, Potter. I suppose Granger taught you that word specifically for the purpose of spending time with people smarter than yourself_. “That’s true,” Draco said. “But we still don’t know how the attacker slipped into the Palliser party.”  
  
“That’s true,” Potter echoed. He folded his arms over his chest, seizing on the topic to distract himself from speculations about where he should sleep and what, Draco thought, he might sleep in. “We’ll have to talk to Tudor Palliser. If your imitator received an invitation for the party, at least we have a name, even though it’s likely to be a false one. If he didn’t, then we’ll learn something about his ward-breaking skills.”  
  
Draco felt a whisper of disquiet for a moment, but he managed to banish it. Malfoy Manor had wards that would make Palliser House moan and collapse under the weight of the magic. No imposter would find him here, which meant he could concentrate on torturing Potter. “Better to let someone else question him,” he said. “He’s so shy of your fame that he nearly fainted when I suggested inviting you.”  
  
“Yeah, that happens a lot.”  
  
Potter sounded resigned. Draco wondered how long it would be before Potter relaxed enough to let his real, arrogant self out. Maybe Draco should give him some hints that hearing Potter talk about his fame would not weary him.  
  
“I reckon it does,” he said. “But you must know you deserve your reputation.”  
  
Potter gave him an irritated glance. Draco prevented himself from frowning, but it was a near thing. What had he done wrong?  
  
*  
  
Harry had felt discomfort from the moment he stepped through the fireplace. The manor houses Malfoy built were obviously nothing compared to the one he’d been born in. Harry tried to recall the memories of how this place had looked the last time he’d been in it, during the Battle—walls shattered like eggshells, ceilings open to the sky, fire and smoke gripping every piece of expensive furniture—but it appeared to have been repaired exactly as if it had never been damaged. Of course, the Malfoys probably still had the original plans from which their ancestors had constructed it.  
  
And then Malfoy had to start talking about his fame.  
  
Harry accepted his fame in the same way he would have accepted an ugly disfigurement: it was there and he had better use it for anything it was good for, but having people regard it as the most important thing about him got old very quickly. He had assumed Malfoy would ignore his reputation out of sheer arrogance and obsession with himself. It was disheartening to realize that he wouldn’t have that escape.  
  
“I’ll talk to Palliser tomorrow,” he said, determined to change the subject.   
  
Malfoy smirked at him, the temporary tightness around his temples vanishing. “I don’t think you’ll have time,” he said. “Tomorrow I have a meeting with an old and valued client, and I’ll need your company at the office. Some other Auror will have to fill the plebeian role you’re planning to take on.” He picked an imaginary bit of lint from his shoulder. “Besides, won’t delegating someone to interview Palliser be fairly easy for the Head Auror to think of?”  
  
Harry exhaled in annoyance. Yes, of course Kingsley would think of that. Harry had grown too used to being in the thick of this case, that was all, to the point that sending someone else to handle even the minor details made him twitchy.   
  
Kingsley would say that was a sign he should enjoy his holiday with the Malfoys. But Harry carefully turned his mind away from the conversation in Kingsley’s office, when Kingsley had seriously tried to argue him into giving up the duty of guarding Malfoy to someone else, or even several people. He was worried about Harry’s “obsession,” as he chose to term it. Harry hated rowing with his friends. He had something else to worry about; there was  _always_  something else to worry about, in this job. “Will your father mind that I’m staying here?”  
  
Malfoy raised his eyebrows. “I doubt it. He stays in the western wing most of the time, which is a distance from my rooms—and yours.” He chuckled, as though Harry’s sleeping in his rooms pleased him, though he’d been the one to suggest the course. Harry worried the corner of his lip thoughtfully. He obviously didn’t know everything about Malfoy, especially about his quirks.  
  
But that was all right. It only made sense that Malfoy would act differently in private life than he would in front of the cameras.  
  
“Of course, Severus might object,” Malfoy added, pulling Harry’s mind abruptly back to the conversation.  
  
Harry stared. “ _Fuck_!” he said. “I never would have come here if I’d known.” To call his relationship with Snape strained was like saying volcanoes got a bit hot sometimes. Snape had played an integral role in the war, but all his actions were ones that, revealed, might bring the vengeance of Death Eaters or disappointed Voldemort supporters down on him. He had been given the Order of Merlin, First Class, in a private ceremony with the Minister, but Harry knew that wasn’t enough for him. He had told Harry bluntly the last time they’d met that Harry didn’t deserve any public honor, that it should have gone to someone who did more than cast a few curses at Voldemort, and that Harry was still a careless child who had no idea how much Snape had sacrificed for him. Snape had fulfilled the debt he thought he owed Lily and Dumbledore to protect Harry, so from now on he would hate him in peace.  
  
Malfoy chuckled. “Do all Aurors learn skills in swearing when they’re admitted to the training program?”  
  
Harry flushed. He had not, in fact, meant to swear aloud in front of Malfoy like that. He cleared his throat. He wanted Malfoy to see him as sophisticated and calm, a man of the world—as he had felt he was, until he stepped into the Manor and began insulting the décor, the taste of the Malfoy family, and the man who probably still served as Malfoy’s mentor. “No, that was my own stupidity. Are you, er, sure you want me here, if Professor Snape would object?”  
  
“Of course,” Malfoy said, leading the way up a spiral staircase that twisted so tightly Harry was amazed Malfoy could walk up it without getting a broken neck. “It’s not his house, and he’s only a guest here.”  
  
“An older guest than I am,” Harry pointed out quietly. Malfoy would like courtesy to his Potions professor. And it was professional for an Auror be polite to everyone involved in a case like this. That last reason was the most important, of course, and should have come first in his mind.  
  
Without benefit of the ring, his conscience could still sound like Hermione.  _Are you sure you can maintain a professional demeanor in regards to this case, Harry? Might it not be better to back up and let another Auror handle this?  
  
But Malfoy said he trusted me to protect him because I’d already done it. Better for him to have me around, with all my false steps and gaffes and leering, than no protection at all._  
  
“I treat all my guests the same,” Malfoy said, and then stopped not far from the top of the staircase to fling open a door that looked to be made of a solid sheet of jade. Harry doubted that even the Malfoys could afford such luxury, though.  _Probably_. “You have as much right to sit at my table and eat my food as he does.”  
  
“Do all your guests sleep in your room?” Harry blurted and then wanted to cover his mouth and die of mortification in the same instant, though he could only do the first.  
  
*  
  
Draco turned to Potter and made sure the smile on his face was calm and coaxing. Potter’s inquiries had thrown him off-balance at first, but beneath them was the man Draco had known was there, honest and forthright and unable to lie to save his life. Such a man could be good prey, but never a challenge to the world of lies Draco would escort him into.  
  
“Of course not,” Draco said. “But Severus never asked such a question. You did.” He lowered his eyes and peered at Potter from under the lashes, as if he were too shy to state what he was thinking.  
  
Potter smiled back. His cheeks were still a brilliant red, but the overall look was not unattractive, Draco thought critically. He should have had someone trim that hair and put permanent enchantments on it long ago; he should have emphasized the scar instead of trying to hide it. Ducking under his fringe made him resemble a nineteenth-century urchin caught out and asked to recite the alphabet. His eyes were his best natural feature, and he insisted on hiding them, too, under thick glasses. Hadn’t he ever heard of an Eagle’s Sight Charm? That would have corrected his vision as well as made his eyes shine.  
  
 _But he doesn’t care about such things. He would probably assume it was poncey to care about them._  
  
Draco’s tactics were all the more likely to score points, then, when he said, as if in a tone of soft wonder, “I’m surprised that you still have so many problems with your fame. Looking at your face, why does anyone remember to look at your scar?”  
  
Potter looked as though he didn’t know whether to be suspicious, surprised, flustered, or pleased. He cleared his throat several times before he muttered, “My face has become just as familiar as my scar with the stories in the  _Prophet_  this last year.”  
  
“I don’t know about that,” Draco said, but Potter settled on a suspicious look, and Draco decided to back off for now. “Why don’t you come into my room and we can decide where to put the second bed?”  
  
Potter stepped through the door. Draco leaned against it, his eyes lingering on Potter’s arse for a long moment before he lifted his head to watch the other man’s reaction to the room.  
  
It glittered on every level. Narcissa had decorated the room in a time when she favored strong jewel colors, and Draco, initially skeptical, had come to applaud his mother’s taste. Green walls, blue curtains, and a silvery four-poster bed with black curtains went together instead of clashing, though how she had done it Draco never knew. He was better at choosing colors for walls and ceilings than he was at choosing them for furniture, and he had become good at clothing only with his mother’s long and patient instruction.  
  
“It looks so alive,” Potter muttered, and then turned and faced Draco with a concerned expression. “Are you sure that you want to put another bed in here? It might spoil the symmetry of the room.”  
  
 _How amusing. He thinks I live every part of my life by the rules of architecture_. Draco shook his head. “Company never ruins the symmetry. As for the colors, I won’t allow Gryffindor red and gold, but feel free to choose whichever else you like.”  
  
“Colors imitating yours are fine,” Potter muttered, and Draco drew his wand and conjured a bed without pausing. That was another useful trick he’d learned during his months among the Death Eaters with Severus, when even Severus didn’t care where he slept as long as he did. After a few glances back and forth from his bed to Potter’s, he adjusted the colors so that the blank tablet of the new bed became a replica of his own.  
  
“I’m rather tired,” he said, and yawned. He was, but the real reason he wanted to sleep was that he could feel his rising eagerness to torment Potter, and he didn’t want to go too far, too fast, in one night. “I hope you don’t mind my going to sleep on you right away. And I usually sleep naked, so…” He let his voice trail off and looked at Potter expectantly.  
  
Potter stared at him for a few moments, then flushed and turned away. Draco felt a stab of both relief and disappointment. Potter had a slower brain than he expected, or was more easily stunned by the splendors of life in Malfoy Manor. Draco would have given much to have a worthier opponent.  
  
But then, wasn’t that the whole point of Potter? That he was ordinary under the mystique, but Draco was one of the few people who could see that?  
  
Draco stripped off his clothes, making sure to stumble once or twice in his “weariness,” just to watch Potter’s reaction. His back twitched with suppressed longing to turn around, but he didn’t do it. Draco hung his robes leisurely over the board at the end of the bed—one of the house-elves would find and clean them before morning—and then climbed into the sheets, sighing in pleasure as the velvety cloth closed around him.  
  
“Good night, Potter,” he muttered, closing his eyes.  
  
Potter’s reply was a bit of mumbled breathiness that could have meant anything. Draco was more interested in the sense of him he experienced just before he fell asleep, a strongly pounding heart and a buzzing warmth of blood in his body, all of it oriented towards him. Potter wasn’t good at disguising his interest or his attention to Draco.   
  
 _Imagine how open the defeat will be on his face_ , Draco thought, and fell asleep.  
  
*  
  
Harry waited until he heard the regular sound of Malfoy’s breathing before he tiptoed over to his bed. It felt real and solid enough when he ran his hand across it, and anyway, he didn’t think Malfoy would have conjured one that would tip him out on the floor or vanish halfway through the night. He would have stayed awake to enjoy the show if he had.  
  
But Harry could hardly bring himself to sit on it. He was still in a daze that he was here, in Malfoy Manor, of all places, a few feet from the man he’d spent the past five years dreaming about, investigating, and defending from his friends.  
  
He looked towards Malfoy. The room had several large windows, but a charm was in effect that Harry recognized from the holding cells at the Ministry; it dimmed light to a level that would permit one to navigate through a dark room with difficulty. The Ministry used such tactics to keep the criminals disoriented when Aurors or Hit Wizards came to visit them. Here, Harry supposed, Malfoy simply didn’t want to be bothered by the moon or stars, or maybe the sunset, if he was decadent and went to bed early.  
  
 _I don’t know if he’s decadent. I don’t know anything about what he’s like in private._  
  
Harry didn’t need the ring or Hermione to let him know that was a problem, if he was going to spend the next several days around Malfoy.   
  
After several stumbles on the corners of furniture and attempts to keep his muffled cursing quiet, he managed to find a door that led into a loo, fancier than the one in his own home but recognizable. After he’d relieved himself, he used a toothbrush and put on a pair of pyjamas from a bag he’d thrown together hastily on a side-trip to his home from St. Mungo’s. He’d returned as quickly as he could to accompany Malfoy through the Floo to the Manor, but Malfoy had still managed to raise one perfect eyebrow and make Harry feel like a fool.  
  
 _This is a job, just a job, like hundreds of others you’ve done_. Harry ran a hand through his hair and stared at his face in the mirror; the loo had hidden lights that had come on when he opened the door.  _Remember how nervous you were when you first ventured out of the Ministry after training? And then you got sick on Stokesbury’s feet because you couldn’t calm your stomach down? This is nothing to that._  
  
Harry gave his reflection a reminiscent smile. Yes, chasing an assassin all over Stokesbury’s confusing home, with the pure-blood wizard bellowing at him to mind the lamps and the curtains, was more difficult than this.  
  
He wouldn’t hope too much. He wouldn’t think that just because Malfoy trusted Harry to protect him, that meant he wanted to go to bed with him. Or even that he wanted to hold his hand and touch him the way he had in Palliser House before the attack happened. For all Harry knew, Malfoy only flirted like that in public where there were other eyes to give him a charge.  
  
Harry shut the door of the loo, dimming the lights as well, and stumbled back to the new bed. He only hit one chair with his thigh, and Malfoy’s breathing never changed.  
  
*  
  
A tremendous crash shattered Lucius’s sleep. War-trained reflexes grabbed him, and he was on his feet and halfway across the room, wand in his hand and robe tucked around his waist out of the way, before he opened his eyes.  
  
He kept moving, because he heard the squeals of terrified house-elves. For such sounds to penetrate this far into the western wing, a huge object must have fallen. Perhaps the chandelier in Abraxas’s Hall, which Narcissa had always told him had a weak chain.  
  
But the moment he stepped through the entrance that connected the western wing to the great hall in the center of the Manor, he realized something quite different was happening.   
  
Draco ran frantically from the arched doorway that led to the eastern wring, then spun on his heel with a graceful ease Lucius was proud to see he hadn’t forgotten in the easy years since the war and shot a curse behind him. The curse hit an alabaster carving of a dragon instead and shattered it. Lucius frowned. Draco would never be so careless as to break the treasures of the house, and he had a better aim.  
  
Then Harry Potter hurtled out of the doorway, and Lucius realized the man who’d flung the curse wasn’t Draco at all. His son preferred “subtle” revenges on Potter to hurting him with magic, and he’d spent a great deal of time meditating on them. This must be the imposter who had attacked at Palliser House earlier that evening.  
  
Except that Lucius had no idea how he’d got through the wards, which were attuned to the Malfoys alone. Even guests like Severus had to have special permission to pass through them.  
  
Potter leaped across the flagstone floor towards the intruder, using strides that his training in the Aurors must have taught him; they looked more like the kind of steps one would have used on stairs. The imposter recoiled, a look of fear distorting his Draco-like features, and bent to one side. Potter’s spell landed beside him and shattered stone. Potter showed no sign of disappointment that his magic had failed, his face locked in the cool mask Lucius remembered from the last few battles of the war. He whipped his wand in a circle instead, a complex, sonorous chant parting his lips.  
  
The imposter leaped backwards, swearing. His voice was eerily similar to Draco’s, pronouncing his vowels with that clipped drawl Narcissa had also had.  
  
The thought of his dead wife, and what she would have said to see him standing here and staring like an idiot when his home had been invaded, made Lucius shake his head and step forwards to help.  
  
His motion drew the intruder’s attention to him. He snarled, his hands clasping his wand so tightly for a moment that Lucius had some hope he would snap it. Lucius aimed at his knees to disable him. He wanted this one alive.  
  
Potter finished his chant in that moment, and a silvery loop of light swung out from the tip of his wand, aimed at the man’s waist.  
  
The imposter shrieked in fury and frustration, and vanished, Apparating at last. Potter managed to snap back his spell before it touched Lucius, but he had to wrestle with it for a moment before he could tuck the power back into his wand. Then he blinked and shook his head.  
  
“How did he get in?” Lucius asked, deciding that was the more pressing question at the moment than why Potter was here.  
  
“I don’t know.” Potter’s voice contained several layers of crushed emotions, but he differed from his wartime self in one respect after all: he was controlling them. “I recognized the bloodline wards when I followed your son into the house, Mr. Malfoy. The likeliest explanation is an unknown relative.”  
  
Lucius nodded. Some years ago he would have said that that was impossible; Malfoys existed only in the direct line. But Narcissa’s death had taught him how blind he might really be, how little his knowledge really encompassed outside the immediate domain of the Manor. “And why are you here?”  
  
Potter bowed his head and ran his hand through his hair. “Your son invited me to stay the night,” he said quietly. “And longer than that. He wanted Auror protection after an attack he suffered tonight, but I’m the only Auror he would trust.”  
  
 _No, you’re the only Auror he wants_ , Lucius thought.  _But that halts here and now_. “Have you considered what other motives my son might have for inviting you here, Potter?” he asked.  
  
Potter stared at him keenly for a moment. Then he said, “I think he’s grown past his schoolboy days. I trust him not to deliberately hurt me.”  
  
“He does want to hurt you,” Lucius said harshly. He disliked being this honest to anyone who was not Draco or Severus, but the situation warranted it. “He’s been dreaming for years about how to get back at you. Half his fame is based on attempts to get you to notice him.”  
  
Potter paused. Lucius waited for an outburst, a demand for further details, a laughing denial that anyone Potter considered so far beneath him would find a way to attract his attention—any of those.  
  
Instead, Potter said gently, “I understand the loss of your wife has been very difficult for you to bear, Mr. Malfoy. But simply because you’ve chosen the life of a recluse instead of one in the world as Draco has, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong, or wants to hurt me.”  
  
 _Draco’s poisoned the well_ , Lucius thought.  _Probably convinced him I’m mad_. Well, he had not expected this to be so easy. He tucked his wand into his sleeve and said, “You are welcome for all of me. I will begin the genealogical research necessary to track down the relative who might have done this. I suggest you stay out of Professor Snape’s way.”  
  
And he turned and went into the southern wing, where the vast libraries of the Manor stood, not caring to look again on Potter’s pitying expression.


	6. Cruel Only To Be Kind

“But the bloodline wards should have prevented him,” Malfoy whispered for the fifth time.  
  
Harry spoke as gently as he could. “Your father was going to research the relative who might have done this. I’m sure he’ll find something, and then we’ll be able to repair the holes in the bloodline wards.”  
  
Those were a variation on the words he’d already spoken six or seven times before. He was wearying himself, and he was sure that Malfoy must think he was stupid, but he didn’t know what else to do. He had no concrete answers to offer, especially since his specialty was offensive magic and Defense Against the Dark Arts, not wards. He could recognize the various types well enough, but he’d never learned much about repairing them.   
  
And touching Malfoy, wrapping a comforting arm around him as he longed to do, was out of the question.  
  
Malfoy shook his head, staring at his hands. “I didn’t pay much attention to him so far, because what he wanted seemed so unimportant, what he did so petty,” he murmured. “I should have. Maybe I could have prevented this intrusion.”  
  
“You’re blaming  _yourself_?” Harry leaned forwards before he could stop the motion; he’d been leaning against the wall of Malfoy’s bedroom, feeling it was best for both of them if he wasn’t in touching distance. And then, well, it would have looked stupid to retreat, wouldn’t it? And Malfoy was staring at him. Harry shook his head. “You can’t do that.”  
  
“Why not?” Malfoy had a sneer buried at the back of his throat.  
  
 _Of course, he won’t see what’s so self-evident to me_. Neither would Ron or Hermione, which was part of the problem they had with Malfoy. Harry ran a hand over his face and tried to explain it. “That’s probably what he wants you to do. Trap yourself in mazes of thought. Paralyze yourself with indecision. Look into his motives, which the Aurors have done so far with no success.”  
  
Malfoy’s eyes were fixed on him now. Harry didn’t think he’d ever been an object of such piercing attention, even when two reporters had descended on him at once with breathless questions about his preference for bondage in bed. He knew he was already flushed, and this close to Malfoy, he couldn’t have hidden it. He settled for staring back and trying to look calm.  
  
“Why haven’t you learned anything about him?” Malfoy’s lips barely moved.  
  
“No one claims to know him, the way they often claim to know criminals, if only for the excitement of the thing,” Harry whispered back. He was so close that he could have cupped Malfoy’s cheek without bending his elbow. He tried to forget that, and the way morning light through the windows caught in Malfoy’s eyelashes, and concentrate solely on the reasonable question he’d been asked. It helped that he had recited the answer for several interviews now. “We can’t learn where he came from. We have no name. His motives for the crimes remain inexplicable. He wants to smear your name, or so we thought, but an attack on you makes no sense, because it would show that you  _aren’t_  him.”  
  
“You can only have come to that conclusion last night.” Malfoy leaned on an elbow. He’d put on a robe when Harry carried the news of the attack to him, but nothing underneath, and Harry kept catching flashes of pale skin that were deeply distracting. “Why were his motives inexplicable before that?”  
  
“Because though the crimes could have been disastrous if they got out of control, they never did. They seemed more like pranks.” This was a conclusion Harry had come to independently of Ron and Kingsley, so he spoke more carefully. It would have helped if he could have taken another step away from Malfoy as well, but his body wasn’t listening to him. “I mean, releasing a hippogriff? It’s not exactly murder.”  
  
“No, but it’s annoying, isn’t it?” Harry wasn’t sure who had moved closer, him or Malfoy, but suddenly he could feel the other man’s breath raking across his cheek. “The Aurors can’t find him, don’t know who he is, and perhaps want to arrest me on principle, and then he shows up in the middle of Mr. Palliser’s party and in the middle of  _my_  home, thus adding extraordinary magical powers to the list of his doubtful attributes.”  
  
Harry felt as though the cadence of the words were drifting through him, making his blood burn and coil in strange directions in his veins. He shivered and said, because he had to join himself to those words somehow, “Kingsley did want to arrest you on principle. But I prevented him from doing it.”  
  
Malfoy’s eyebrows rose. “Really.” His breath wasn’t sweet, but it was better than that—warm, and near. “Why were you so certain that he wasn’t me?”  
  
Harry swallowed. He wanted to tell Malfoy about the connection between their wands. Really, what harm could it do? It might make Malfoy more comfortable, knowing that Harry would always know the difference between him and the imposter, or that Harry could track him if he got kidnapped, as long as his wand stayed with him. And anything that moved him closer to Malfoy was good.  
  
But he still had Auror instincts and his friends’ voices in his head, and they told him that Malfoy might still have ulterior motives for the friendliness he was showing Harry. So he said, “You’ve changed since the war. And you’ve invested a lot of yourself in your new job. Why would you want to throw that all away, for the sake of causing the Aurors to run in circles?”  
  
Malfoy narrowed his eyes, but didn’t actually disagree. Instead, he murmured, “If you think you know me well now, it’s nothing compared to how well you’ll know me in a short time.”  
Harry succumbed to his weakness then, and reached out to touch Malfoy.  
  
But Malfoy had pulled back before his hand began to move and was springing to his feet, stretching his arms above his head. “Come,” he said. “We should have some breakfast, examine the bloodline wards to see if we can determine the spot where he broke through, and then go to the office. I do have a client to meet with.”  
  
Harry checked his sigh. His passion still thudded in the center of his chest like a second heartbeat, and he averted his gaze as Malfoy went to use the loo. Harry sat down on his conjured bed when he heard the door click shut and attempted to get his breathing under control.  
  
 _No going too fast. Even if he does like you, even if you could sleep together without compromising the case, you can’t create something lasting by forcing your presence on him. And this has to be something lasting. It won’t be enough for you if it isn’t._  
  
By the time Malfoy stepped out of the loo in brand-new robes, with his pale hair clean and hanging straight about his face in a sheer silk curtain, Harry had got himself under control. He paced behind Malfoy as they both went down the tight spiral stairs, his eyes alert for any threat.  
  
If he allowed himself one glance at Malfoy’s hair every third step, well, that was because he knew indulging himself within a certain limit would soothe his frustrations and make him more alert in the end.  
  
*  
  
Draco peeled a banana and leaned back in his chair, subtly flexing his fingers. If he concentrated, he thought he could actually feel the silken strings attached to each of them. The other end of the strings was wrapped about Potter’s soul.  
  
Potter appeared unaware that he didn’t often take his gaze off Draco, even whilst he recited the tale of the burst of magic that had alerted him to someone breaking through the bloodline wards and jerked him out of bed. He noticed when they got close, but he reacted as if he thought that only natural. His skin, in its flush, and his eyes, in their darting, and his hands, in their trembling, showed every thought that passed through his head. Draco had never encountered someone so susceptible to seduction and yet so incapable of recognizing that a seduction was, in fact, happening.  
  
Draco ate his banana now with leisurely grace, keeping one eye on Potter. The way he stretched his lips around the banana and licked the length wouldn’t have fooled any Slytherin over eleven years old, but Potter leaned towards him, one hand twitching constantly under the table, as if he would reach out and replace the banana with his fingers.  
  
“I hope that my father will find something in his research,” Draco said, to keep the game from moving too fast. “However, I’ve studied the genealogical records myself, and I’m almost certain there is no long-lost Malfoy relative.” Potter didn’t need to know that Draco had memorized the records in the aftermath of the war, looking desperately for a reason to be proud of his family after his father’s temporary arrest and his mother’s shame. “That means we have to look for more arcane explanations for the breaking of the bloodline wards.”  
  
Potter blinked slowly, like someone coming out of a long sleep, and then nodded. “Wards aren’t at all my specialty,” he said. “Would you trust another Auror to come here and examine them?”  
  
Draco pasted a horrified look across his face. With someone else, he might have worried about overacting, but Potter had already proven his lack of skill in detecting such things. “When that Auror might have a connection to my enemy?”  
  
“It’s unlikely—“  
  
“You’ve admitted you don’t know anything about him.” Draco leaned forwards. “Well,  _I_  know one thing about him. He keeps escaping from the Aurors. What could that indicate but someone on the inside, someone who gives him enough warning to flee?”  
  
Potter’s nostrils flared, and he gave his head a toss. “We’ve investigated that angle,” he said.  
  
“And?”  
  
Potter’s mouth opened, but then he clamped his lips together and shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, and he did sound genuinely apologetic. Draco licked his lips; there was a sensation in his mouth like candied fruit melting on his tongue. He had  _dreamed_  of Potter apologizing to him. The sensation grew sharper and sweeter when Potter’s eyes followed his tongue. “But it relates to the internal politics of the Auror Department and, well.” He shrugged. “I can’t.”  
  
“That’s all right,” Draco said. Potter perked up like a dog offered a walk instead of a bath. Draco muffled his chuckle with the last of the banana, delicately licking the strings of the fruit from his lips. Why not? It offered him another chance to watch Potter watch his tongue. “I have someone who can deal with breaks in the bloodline wards.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
Draco cocked his head at one of the entrances to the dining room, and Severus walked in, on cue. Draco had sent him a message by house-elf whilst he was still in the loo and asked if he’d liked to surprise Potter. Severus had agreed instantly. Perhaps he’d been waiting outside that door that led to one of the sitting rooms for more than ten minutes, but he would consider that a small price to pay for showing up Potter.  
  
Potter pushed his chair halfway back from the table, as if he thought he should rise to his feet.  _Because he needs to defend himself or because he wants to show respect_? Draco thought, and wished for another banana to hold back his laughter.  _He ought to know that Severus will accept no tribute of respect from him, no matter what happens._  
  
“Professor Snape, sir,” Potter said without inflection.  
  
“Once again you prove the slowness with which your thoughts travel relative to the rest of the world,” said Severus, with the fine acidity in his tones that Draco loved to hear and which had been at least half the reason he’d pressed his father into inviting Severus to live in the Manor. “I am no longer a Professor and have not been for seven years.”  
  
Potter jerked his head in a short bow and said, “How will you use potions to check for the tears in the bloodline wards, sir?”  
  
“You would not understand the method described if dragons wrote it in fiery letters around your head,” Severus said in utterly bored tones. Potter leaned back again, flushing in mortification.   
  
Draco glanced between them as if bewildered by their hostility. “Strange,” he murmured. “I thought you would get on better than this. You’re both war heroes now.”  
  
“There is only one hero in this room,” Severus said, “if you define the word, as I always have, to mean someone who makes great sacrifices for the safety and peace of others, whilst barely seeing reward himself.” He turned his head towards Potter with a coiled strength to his neck that reminded Draco of a hawk ready to tear open a snake. “Someone whose victory is guaranteed by fate, someone who did not understand the sacrifices others made and exploited them when he did, someone granted everything he could want from the day he came into the wizarding world…one must find some other name for such a person.”  
  
Potter had risen to his feet, face one white blaze of fury, hands locked on his elbows as though he would not give Severus the satisfaction of going for his wand. “You’re wrong, Snape,” he said.  
  
“So you have often told me,” Severus said. “And yet, not one preconception of your arrogance have you ever corrected, not one Potions recipe have you ever managed to explain more clearly than I did.”  
  
Potter’s shoulders stiffened. “I didn’t get everything I wanted when I came into the wizarding world.”  
  
“And what attention your slavering fans could provide was denied you?” Severus asked, with a deep sigh.  
  
“My parents, you bastard,” Potter whispered, and then turned and walked of the dining room with stately steps, though Draco was more than sure he didn’t have any idea of where he was going. The doorway he took wasn’t the one they’d entered the room by.  
  
Severus stared after him, face worked in an intriguing mixture of jealousy, hatred, and sadness. Then he faced Draco with a motion that shook his hair, still greasy from the amount of brewing he did, into half-tangled ruins about his face. “The potions to test the break in the wards will be ready soon,” he said.  
  
“Why do you bait him that way?” Draco asked, folding his hands under his chin.  
  
“For the reasons I stated.” Severus stared at him as if he had become the hawk’s prey in turn. “Tell me, Draco, by what standard of justice did I earn no reward, my name still hated and mocked in most of the wizarding world, when Potter may walk freely and be worshipped?”  
  
“You once told me there was no such thing as justice,” Draco said gently, “except for that we made ourselves.”  
  
Severus’s face froze the way it always did when Draco remembered one of his lessons at the most inconvenient times. Then he said, “And there are other reasons.”  
  
“What are they?”  
  
“You need not know them.” Severus turned away. “Ten minutes’ time, and I will test the potions. You may repair to your office.” He glided through the doorway he’d used to come in with a sharp snap of his robes and was gone.  
  
Draco sat back, trembling now that there was no one around to see it, and clasped his hands before him as if he meant to pray. He shook with excitement, with nerves, with pride in Severus for being the only other person Potter didn’t cow—  
  
And with fiery yearning for the light that had flashed through Potter’s eyes when he’d snapped back at Severus.  
  
Such emotions could not be expressed in front of their target, of course. Draco was meant to consume Potter, not the other way around. But in moments of solitude, Draco might let them ring through him, the way he had always indulged his temper tantrums and fears and rare bouts of sympathy.  
  
*  
  
Draco Malfoy, Harry thought as he watched him deal with the “older and valued client” he had described to Harry last night, was an  _artist._  
  
Of course, he had learned that from studying Malfoy’s houses, and it was the basis of the defense he had painted to Ron and Hermione when they tried to urge him away from Malfoy. But he had learned everything he knew before this at a distance. The clean lines of houses and pillars and porches spoke their own language, but none of it was as clear as watching Draco study the plans in front of him with a vivid, intelligent eye, and then dismiss them as rubbish was.   
  
The older, valued client blinked. He was the tallest man Harry had seen in more than a year, since he and Ron caught the Giraffe Killer. He had gray hair that he wore wreathed around his ears in a style that made Harry wonder if he knew Luna. His eyes were brilliant yellow, and his robes of so fine and smooth a cloth that standing in the same room with him made Harry feel underdressed. Altogether, he was not the kind of wizard he had expected to see Malfoy treat with impunity.  
  
But the wizard, whose name was Rolfston Keller, seemed to accept Malfoy’s words. He nodded and blinked again and stooped to retrieve the plans from the floor. “Then what will work?” he said.  
  
“You want a home by the sea.” Malfoy leaned forwards, his hands sculpting an outline in the air. Harry tried to make it out, but he was best-suited to seeing the lovely shapes of the houses  _after_  they had developed. That was what made Malfoy the architect and him the Auror, he supposed. “You need a home that will partake of the cliffs and the water.”  
  
“I don’t believe I ever requested that,” said Keller.  
  
“You didn’t know enough to request it,” Malfoy retorted. The heels of his hands collided with the sides of the desk. Harry squinted, and this time could make out the box-lines he sketched. Of course, anything more subtle than that was lost on him. “But, trust me, I know how to give it.”  
  
“Why is the way the house fits into its natural surroundings so important?” Keller asked.  
  
Malfoy drew himself up and looked at Keller as if the man had just spat on the floor in front of him.  _Well_ , Harry amended as he studied him,  _a tile floor, at least. Malfoy probably would be more upset if it was a marble one._  
  
“Why is the ceiling important?” Malfoy asked softly. “Why are the walls? The floor?”  
  
Keller frowned. “Without those it wouldn’t be a house, only a space.”  
  
Malfoy flashed a smile that made Harry’s breath catch in his throat all over again, but not because it was sweet. It was just so  _Malfoy_ , the smile of an intelligent, predatory man fully content in his natural element.   
  
“You’ve spoken more clearly and earlier than most of my clients would,” he said. “Yes. That’s exactly it.” His fingers rapped a dance on the desk. Harry tried to look for patterns in their darting movements, but once again, couldn’t find it. Perhaps Malfoy was simply occupying his hands whilst his mind danced and dreamed on more important plans. “Without being part of the cliffs and the water around it, the house would be only a house. It won’t be a home, it won’t be yours, and it won’t be mine.”  
  
Harry would have hesitated if confronted with a pronouncement like that, but then, he wouldn’t have known how to give Keller’s first answer, either. The gray-haired wizard simply nodded, resigned. “You won’t build it without redesigning the plans.”  
  
Malfoy’s face took on an intent, persuasive look that made Harry immediately imagine what other circumstances, and rooms, he might use it in. “Have I  _ever_  failed you?”  
  
“My nephew’s home—“  
  
“I can’t be responsible if the first thing someone does when he comes into a house is pull the supporting walls out.”  
  
“He wanted a large interior room,” Keller murmured, and then sighed and rose to his feet. “As always, Master Malfoy, a pleasure, and you’ve thought of things I wouldn’t even have seen, which is what I want from my employees.”  
  
“I’m not your employee,” Malfoy said.  
  
“Until I give you money, of course.” Keller took out a large purse that rang and bulged and tossed it carelessly into the middle of Malfoy’s desk. Harry was willing to bet it contained more Galleons than he would make in six months of work as an Auror. He found himself watching not the bag, however, but Malfoy’s face, as he leaned back in his chair and sneered at Keller.   
  
“Not even then. I’m a free man. Call yourself my patron, and that would be a closer approximation of the truth of our relationship.”  
  
Keller laughed and bowed to Malfoy, who didn’t bother to return the gesture, before he strode from the room.   
  
Malfoy cocked his head and smiled. He’d been facing half away from Harry for the vast majority of the conversation, and even now he didn’t turn around. The smile was more for the devious sense of possibilities spinning out in his head than anyone in the room, Harry thought.  
  
“I’ve never watched you work that close at hand,” Harry said, unable to keep silent now. “It was interesting.”  _Interesting_  was a pale shadow of the adjectives he wanted to use, but Malfoy would probably scoff at him if he spoke those words now. Harry felt too exhilarated to bear that laughter.  
  
 _Exhilarated, from nothing more than watching a man act with arrogance and scorn towards his betters? As Hermione would say._  
  
Harry rolled his shoulders. It was Keller’s choice to spend his money this way, and to hire Malfoy. So Malfoy’s arrogance and scorn were not simply that, but a business manner that probably served him well with pure-blood clients.  
  
Malfoy was too well-bred to start, but from the deliberate turn of his head in Harry’s direction, Harry was sure Malfoy had forgotten his presence, at least momentarily.   
  
“Strange,” Malfoy murmured.  
  
“What?” Harry clenched his hands on the arms of his chair as he realized he had forgotten his bodyguard duties for some moments. Of course, Malfoy’s office was a single large room with the door in front of his desk, the blue tiled walls reflecting blurred and wavering shadows of any movement. Harry had noted the wards as they came up the steps outside; he hadn’t had any choice but to notice them, because Malfoy had made him wait five minutes whilst he undid the most complex of them and then did them up again behind Harry. So it was not as though the imposter would find the place easy to attack without being seen, but still. He was here to do a job, not to admire Malfoy.  
  
“That you think it interesting, rather than scolding me self-righteously about my arrogance from your position of Gryffindor humility.” Malfoy’s eyes were half-lidded.  
  
Harry laughed bitterly in spite of himself, Malfoy’s words pulling back what Snape had said to him in the dining room that morning. Harry had made all the overtures of peace and friendship to Snape that he knew how to make, and still the man continued to persist in thinking Harry a copy of his father. If Harry hadn’t received hints that Snape knew his mother and might know untold stories concerning her, the rejection probably wouldn’t have hurt so much. “I’m the arrogant one not fit to be called a hero, remember?”  
  
Malfoy leaned back from the desk to lay his hand on Harry’s shoulder. His face came much closer as well, and it was grave, the eyes shadowed.  
  
“I gave up on believing everything Severus says long ago,” he said quietly.  
  
Harry felt the air between them take fire. He could feel Malfoy’s breath on his cheek, along his lips, again, and Malfoy was watching him with an emphasis that made Harry’s throat go tight. Malfoy suddenly tilted his head, eyes flickering, and Harry knew he felt it, too.  
  
Neither of them could draw away, though Harry knew he should. There were rules about who Aurors could sleep with when on jobs, and the people they were supposed to protect were most certainly not among them. But as he began to lean towards Malfoy, he felt as if he were answering a force of nature rather than giving in to temptation.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes fluttered shut, and he made a small, surprised noise, a smothered moan. Harry feathered his fingers through the hair above his ear and felt the hair rub like down against his skin. He was so close, and it was so warm.  
  
And that, of course, was the moment the imposter chose to try to break through the wards strung around Malfoy’s office.


	7. Sweet Revenge Grows Harsh

Draco heard the sound of his wards shattering as if they had been a series of alabaster figurines tipped to the floor at once. He might have frozen, confused about where he was—during the Battle of Malfoy Manor, there had been a row of figurines that smashed like that—if not for the stinging tickle of the wards up and down his ribs. They had been bound to him, because Draco liked the idea of an extra warning if he was asleep or at a distance from the office and didn’t hear them breaking.   
  
For the first time, he tasted genuine fear. Bloodline wards were ancient and powerful, but all based on a common pattern. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the imposter could find a way to break them, if he looked in the right books. But the wards on his office were unique. They should have let only Draco through or those people Draco give implicit permission by waving them in.   
  
 _Where did he find the knowledge to break them? Who is he? What is he?_  
  
Potter’s arm curved around his waist, and the next moment they were falling to the floor of the office, rolling in circles accompanied by their dancing reflections in the blue tiles. Draco resisted the temptation to pull away and sit up, establishing his own dignity and separation from Potter. At the moment, doing that might ensure he didn’t survive.  
  
Besides, Potter’s arm around his waist was endurable, and his weight and warmth and closeness far more pleasant than Draco had expected them to be. He felt a harsh shiver course through him, and he shook his head, half-winded and not understanding why.  
  
“Wake up, Draco!”  
  
Potter yelled the words right into his face, making his head jerk backwards. Draco started to snap back, but Potter shook him, hard, and Draco found his teeth clashing together instead. He almost bit his tongue. He struggled this time, wondering if Potter was in league with the imposter to kill him. It would be the kind of luck Draco would have.   
  
Potter’s hands ground down, imprisoning his arms at his sides. Draco showed his teeth in a snarl. Whatever Potter’s strange preferences,  _he_  didn’t like being held prisoner, by an enemy or by a lover.  
  
“I can hear him coming.”  
  
The hissed words restored Draco’s composure, and reminded him of where he was and what he might need to survive in the next few minutes. He took a deep breath, released it little by little, and finally nodded.   
  
“He’s radiating so much Dark magic it’s a wonder every Auror in ten miles isn’t on him,” Potter muttered in a distracted tone. Draco controlled the impulse to tell him to pay attention, that his  _life_  was at stake here. “But he might have cast some sort of spell to muffle it unless someone is as close to him as we are.” One of the hands clutching Draco’s shoulders gave it a gratifying stroke, as if in apology for the way Potter had manhandled him earlier. Then Potter’s head turned with the alert grace of a hunting wolf’s, and he focused on the far side of the room. “ _There_. He’ll have to come in through there.”  
  
“There” was Draco’s large glass window, which looked clear until one studied it with one’s head cocked to the side, in which case it reflected a myriad shades of blue. “No,” Draco protested. “Do you know much that cost?”  
  
“I don’t, but I’ll bet  _he_  does,” Potter said. “He’s a more formidable opponent than I thought.” Abruptly he slewed his head around like one of the swans Father had kept for a while before he got peacocks and hissed at Draco from between clenched teeth. “And I won’t have you slowing me down whilst I try to save your life, you  _spoiled brat_.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth, but could say nothing; in the end he blinked meekly and shut it again. Potter was a different creature now, transformed, in control of the situation in a way Draco had never learned to be. His activities in the past few years had only endangered the fortunes of other people, not his own life.  
  
Potter put a hand on the floor and began thumping the heel of his palm against the tile in a regular pattern. Draco wanted to shriek at him to be quiet, that perhaps his enemy would hear that, but he was sure his own voice would give them away even more effectively. He swallowed and kept silent, his fingers digging into his palms in a way that he was sure would leave marks later.  
  
A dark figure swelled against the window; then a shoulder, or maybe a spell, collided with the glass. The window cracked down the middle and then into quarters, hardly leaving Draco time to mourn before it fell slowly, majestically, inwards and crumbled into much smaller shards on the office floor.  
  
The imposter came through the window with a swiftness that made Draco wince.  
  
But Potter was up and on his way to meet him already, and a moment later the confined office was filled with the leap and crackle of magic.  
  
*  
  
Lucius slammed shut the third book he’d looked through, and sighed in disgust. A puff of dust rose into his face, and he coughed. Draco had forbidden all the house-elves to come into the library after the war, as if he thought that the family’s honor could be reclaimed by letting no one who was not of the blood in among their secrets.   
  
His ancestors had been  _thorough_  people. Lucius had found notations on stillborn children, including their sex and what their names would have been had they lived. His ancestors had included long family trees of those Malfoy daughters who had married into other families and borne children who could not properly be considered Malfoys. After all, they knew that someday the direct line might run out and the Manor would need a Malfoy in residence, even if it had to be someone who hadn’t borne the name from birth.  
  
Lucius thought he could trust the records. And all the records insisted that Draco was the fourth in a line of only children. Lucius’s great-grandfather had had sisters, but one had died young and the other had married a man of the Deadsea line, widely rumored to be infertile; at any rate, she’d had no children. If other Malfoy relatives existed, they were so distant that they should have not been able to affect the bloodline wards one way or the other.  
  
It was a mystery. And Lucius did not like mysteries unless he caused them.  
  
A sharp knock on the door made him look up. It was unlike Draco to return this early to the house during a workday. And, of course, with Potter guarding him, he would probably feel more temptation to show off his skills in the office than ever.   
  
“Lucius?”  
  
Severus’s voice. Lucius frowned.  _He’s never tried to enter this room_. Though Severus never talked about the war except to complain bitterly of how unfairly he had been treated afterwards, Lucius had long suspected that Severus had been tortured in the library of the old Manor.  
  
“Enter,” Lucius said. The door glowed, and the protections Draco had set up died out in a fall of blue sparks. Severus stepped inside and shut the door at once, as if he thought someone might be lingering nearby to spy on them.  
  
“What is it?” Lucius had never seen such a hunted look occupy Severus’s eyes. Of course, they hadn’t been together often during the course of the war.  
  
“There was no break in the bloodline wards,” Severus said.  
  
“If he was a Malfoy relative, of course there would not have been,” said Lucius. “And if he were not a relative, then he should not have been able to pass them in the first place.” He deliberately made his tone stuffy. Severus hated to be lectured.  
  
“I mean,” said Severus, taking a step closer and moving like a prowling panther, “there is no break  _at all_. It is as if he were a resident of the house who had been missing for years and then came home and persuaded the Manor to accept him again. The burst of magic that made his entrance noticeable to you was the house realigning itself to him.”  
  
“As if he were Draco returning after a long journey,” Lucius said slowly. He felt the edge of an intuition twitch and stir at the corner of his mind, but when he went after it, it slid away again. He snarled in frustration.   
  
“Yes,” said Severus.  
  
“So he might come into the house again, this time without our noticing,” said Lucius, seizing the concrete worry.  
  
“Yes.” Severus bared his teeth. “If Mr. Potter were not staying here, I could pour potions on the foundations that would notify us of any entrant at all. But I fear he will be visiting his friends at the Ministry often enough that it would be useless.”  
  
“Draco goes in and out of the house often too,” Lucius said, rising to his feet. He was already tired of hearing about Severus’s grudge against Potter. “Use the potions, Severus. I’ll bear the inconvenience.”  
  
“The potions I am thinking of using would also alert me.”  
  
Lucius paused with a hand on the wall. “And you aren’t willing to bear a little inconvenience to keep Draco from being murdered?” He inflected his voice with a delicate trace of shock. “You are not the man I thought you were, Severus.”  
  
Severus spun on his heel and departed without a word. Lucius was glad.  
  
He was going to the room where he would be alone with the memorials of the wife he had never truly known, and a mind disordered by argument was inappropriate when he entered such a place.  
  
*  
  
Harry took and kept the offensive in the fight from the first moment the intruder came through the window. If he was driven back into the defensive, he could lose the battle because of his unfamiliarity with Draco’s office, and any stumble he made might give the imposter a chance to hit Draco.  
  
That was unacceptable.  
  
 _And so is your calling him Draco_ , snapped some obscure part of his mind in the moment before the rush of battle consumed him completely.  
  
Curses flickered and snapped past Harry’s head like the firing of Muggle lasers. The imposter was good, whoever he was. But there was more to fighting than being good with curses, as Harry had learned time after time in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Leave yourself open to your opponent, and you might as well have sent them a signed invitation to your funeral. So the man’s curses broke against the Shield Charm Harry had raised before the window exploded, and in the meantime Harry marked him again and again and again with hexes and jinxes and curses that left shallow, bleeding cuts down his legs or snagged his ankles and made him trip or made his hand slip on his wand. Harry didn’t want to kill him. If this man wasn’t taken alive, then the Auror Office might never find out what he had wanted, or, worse, might never find out if he had accomplices waiting to take over his criminal act if he died.  
  
A Cutting Curse tried to take his hand off at the wrist. Harry laughed breathlessly and spun to the side, pushing his back against the wall and aiming at the intruder’s kneecaps. He was beginning to get the measure of his enemy now, and he wasn’t so very good after all. He knew the flashy spells, but every moment he had devoted to studying those was one he hadn’t spent on defense or counters to the everyday spells Harry used that were causing him such trouble.  
  
At least Harry knew the source of the powerful Dark magic that surrounded him now: a vial swinging at his waist that was filled with sloshing blue liquid. He’d impregnated the crystal with spells that would destroy anyone who crushed the vial or tried to take it from him, and the liquid itself bore several powerful enchantments. That made Harry think it was a Potions ingredient, rather than a potion itself. He would have to ask Snape what it might be, and hope the man would actually talk to him instead of snapping.   
  
The man shouted with triumph, and Harry realized he’d fallen into the trap of contemplating the vial too closely. The latest spell had scored a smoking hole into the center of his palm, and  _Merlin_ , that hurt.  
  
Harry tossed his wand, which was luckily unhurt, from his right hand to his left. Part of the standard training that all Aurors received now, on Kingsley’s suggestion, was in how to fight ambidextrously. He bit down on his lip, forcing a concentration as clear as the vial that let him ignore the pain and focus on the fight instead. The imposter was dodging towards him, mouth open in an idiot smile. That was another thing that separated him from the real Draco. He would never smile in such an uncontrolled fashion. Harry had a hard time imagining him uncontrolled for any reason.  
  
Which, in a way, was a pity.  
  
 _Concentrate_! Harry snapped at himself, and then aimed his wand at the imposter’s mouth and thought a certain nonverbal spell that Ron had discovered last month when he mispronounced a standard incantation used to stop criminals from shouting obscenities.  
  
The imposter’s lips snapped shut, and then skin began to grow over them, sealing his mouth and creeping towards his nose. A long, rattling moan escaped him. He jumped backwards, and Harry cast a spell that he hoped would cut the vial harmlessly from his belt.  
  
A curtain of green fire rose around the man’s belt, though, and Harry swore as he felt it singe his eyebrows and eyelashes even from this distance. He hopped away and strengthened his Shield Charm, extending it down and to the sides. That way, it should at least partially protect Draco, too.  
  
The green fire vanished. For a moment, the attacker stared, panting, at Harry. He already had his mouth back again, Harry noticed in disappointment. He  _did_  find ways around all the measures they took to combat him awfully quickly. It had made Hermione speculate before now that perhaps they were dealing with some kind of misguided genius, and Harry had almost agreed, except, well, why should a genius spend his days trying to imitate Draco Malfoy?  
  
“That’s where the  _misguided_  part comes in,” Hermione had said, and had given Harry the tolerant look that said he needed to spend more time with a dictionary.  
  
Harry took a single, threatening step forwards. Perhaps it was that, or perhaps it was the faint smile he could feel lingering on his face as he thought about Hermione, but the imposter Apparated.   
  
Harry didn’t think that should have been possible even with the broken remnants of the wards dangling around them, but he had grown used to the impossible when dealing with this man. He shook his head and turned back to Draco, who was still on the floor. Harry crouched down. His concern would be visible, but with any luck, Draco would think it was the sort of concern he always showed when dealing with someone he protected.  
  
Of course, Draco was neither blind nor stupid, and he would probably remember the tense moment lingering between their mouths before the imposter interrupted as well as Harry would. Still, Harry made his voice as formal and polite as he could  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
*  
  
Draco kept his cheek pressed against the floor for long moments before he answered. It would do Potter some good to worry.  
  
Besides, Draco was trying to determine the answer to that question for himself.  
  
He had never seen Potter in the midst of battle before. He’d collected clippings of it, dreamed and brooded on the memories he had of Potter casting the Patronus or hexing him on the train or telling stories of how he defeated Voldemort, and imagined what it must look like. But images were nothing next to the reality.  
  
Draco had felt his heart stop more than once as he watched Potter stamp and circle through the storm of light from the attacker’s wand, and not with fear. It was desire that coiled through his veins like wyvern venom and made him roll so that his groin was pressed firmly into the floor, hiding his erection from both of the other men in the room. When Potter finished the battle and came over to kneel and touch his shoulder, the brush of his fingers went through Draco like flame.  
  
Though he still did not know the exact terms of his vengeance that would leave Potter bleeding and broken, Draco now knew better what  _he_  demanded, to live content. He had to have Potter in bed at least once. He had to have that great strength contained and writhing under him, uttering little broken cries as he gave way to passion at least as strong as that which consumed Draco now. Draco felt a moment of intense relief that Potter’s lovers had gone to the papers on several occasions and confessed what he liked in bed. That would let Draco have a much better idea of what worked in seducing him than if he were going into this blind.  
  
“Are you all right?” Potter repeated, and now there was an alarmed edge to his voice.  
  
Draco lay still a moment longer, letting his plans bubble and settle into one another like a potion in the final cooling stages. Then he rolled over, hooked an arm behind Potter’s head, and pulled him down into a kiss.  
  
Potter grunted and flailed, but showed no interest in dragging himself away. Indeed, in a moment he was grumbling and pushing closer to Draco, his chin jabbing into Draco’s throat, his arms curving powerfully around Draco’s shoulders.  
  
Draco pushed off from the floor, never breaking the sudden joining of their lips. Potter grunted again as his shoulders hit the tile. Draco straddled his hips and flicked his tongue again and again and again into Potter’s mouth, trying to imitate the darting kisses that his lover Penelope Armitage had said he liked.  
  
Potter’s lips softened beneath his from the near-grimace they had been locked in, and Potter’s breath caught and rasped and rumbled, in what Draco thought would have been a groan had he managed to release it. Instead, his mouth was trapped under Draco’s, the  _sound_ trapped under Draco, the broad shoulders pinned by his hands, the long legs wrapping around him and welcoming him between them—  
  
Draco sobbed aloud, glad a moment later that the sound was so muffled against Potter’s lips that no one else had a chance of recognizing it. He couldn’t keep his hands from descending and clinging, his mouth from planting a kiss on Potter’s cheek because it was there, or his knee from rubbing insistently against Potter’s cock. His head reeled and his world danced and his justifications collapsed around him like a pile of straw.  
  
 _This_  was what he had wanted when he collected the remnants of Potter’s meanderings around London.  _This_  was what he needed.  _This_  was what he—  
  
And then Draco slammed the door shut on the realization and tore his mouth away from Potter’s at the same time. He licked his lips and found himself meeting dazed eyes. Even after Potter had blinked several times, there was no sign that sense was returning to his face.  
  
 _I have to remain in control_ , Draco reminded himself.  _This is my seduction, my revenge. I can certainly take what I want, but I can’t fall into the same trap I’ve prepared for Potter._  
  
The notion sobered him. It was not a danger he had ever considered before. Why should he? Draco knew every thought that passed through Potter’s head, every sharp limitation placed on his soul. There were too many rough and unpolished edges to Potter to attract him. What made him worthy of conquering in the first place was his luck, and no more.   
  
At least, Draco had thought so. It seemed he had a deeper fund of craving in him that the ministrations of his elegant, untarnished lovers over the last several years had not touched.  
  
But he was already master of his emotions whilst Potter still struggled to recover from the kiss, and that made it possible for him to lower his eyes and murmur, “I’m sorry. Disgraceful of me, to forget myself like that. I suppose everyone does things like that sometimes, in the sheer excitement of being alive after a battle, but it’s not like a Malfoy to give way to common impulses.”  
  
Potter blinked the darkness away from his eyes, and slowly nodded. However, he made no attempt to pull away from Draco. Instead, he stared into his face with a heated gaze, and murmured, “I think you ought to give way to common impulses more often, then.”  
  
Draco flushed. It was an unnatural, controlled flush, of course. How could it be otherwise? His passions obeyed him, and not the other way around. “I’m glad you think so,” he said. “But still, you’re the Auror assigned to protect me, and I’m your client. We can’t do this again.” He rose to his feet, letting Potter see the shaking in his legs.  
  
Potter stood and lent an arm to support him. Draco raised an eyebrow and stepped deliberately away. “I’m hardly some fainting damsel,” he said.  
  
“Did I mean to imply that you were?” Potter had no sound of hurt in his voice from the rebuke, which was not what Draco had expected. He dropped his arm, but that was only to step closer, looking at Draco as though they were the same height and held the same importance in the world. His voice was low and thick and warm with the heat of mysterious things. “I saw you swaying and wanted to hold you up, that was all.”  
  
“You think I’m weak.” Draco dashed a bit of lint from his shoulder and looked away.  
  
“Nothing like!” Potter’s voice soared so sharply that Draco had to look back at him, and then he was caught as Potter stepped towards him and splayed his fingers in fan-like shapes on either side of his face. His eyes had the same shine they’d possessed when he was fighting the imposter. “I thought you might need support, the way anyone not used to battle might when he was caught in one. It was an extraordinary circumstance. That’s different from thinking you’re weak all the time and in ordinary circumstances. You understand?”  
  
Draco nodded, hating the feeling that someone had gripped his head by the hair and was nodding it for him.  
  
“Good.” Potter smiled at him, and then his voice dropped into a murmur even softer and more heated, though how that was physically possible Draco didn’t know. “As for what happened between us today, I agree it shouldn’t resume yet. This attack was  _serious_ , and I have to report to Kingsley about it and ask whether they’ve found any information on how he entered Palliser’s party.” Storm and not lust darkened his eyes this time. “But we can’t ignore what happened here, either. I’ll ask you to sleep with me when the case is solved. You can refuse me permanently then, if you like.” He winked. “Although I’m liable to wait a week and ask again.”  
  
“Why?” Draco hated the way his voice sounded, too soft. On the other hand, it would probably convince Potter he was caught up in the farce of love Potter had no doubt imagined to excuse his actions.  
  
“I’ve wanted you for a long time,” Potter said simply, as if that was enough explanation.  
  
Triumph washed over Draco, heady and fragrant as a hothouse of violets and roses.  _Oh, yes, I have him. If he wants me, if it’s not simply desire that I awoke in him the last few days, I’ll be able to do as I like with him._  
  
Life was so very sweet.


	8. Working-Day World

“If you want to wait outside, you can.”  
  
Draco shook his head and followed him into the Ministry. Harry hid a smile at his expression. Since they had faced the imposter in his office, Draco seemed unwilling to be parted from Harry, as if he imagined that the reputation and wandwork that had failed to ward the man off three times would manage a fourth.  
  
Of course, Harry couldn’t blame himself for the attacks he’d been unable to prevent. He’d had no idea they were facing a wizard of this level of talent, let alone mad stubbornness. Most ordinary fixations wouldn’t require so much work to defend against. Harry had tracked Dark wizards who wanted someone on the winning side to pay before, but they often gave up when they saw the Aurors bristling like a briar-hedge around the case, or only one Auror ready to sacrifice his life to protect their target. This man would commit suicide before he gave up, Harry was now certain.  
  
He had to warn Ron and Kingsley of that.  
  
More than one person turned to stare at Malfoy as they trotted through the Auror Department. Harry suspected they thought he was bringing the imposter in, but they couldn’t understand why the imposter was walking tamely instead of floating in a Body-Bind or at least attached to him with a Stretched Leash Jinx, which would recoil sharply if the victim tried to wander too far from the person who cast it.  
  
However, no one interfered until Harry had turned down the corridor outside Kingsley’s office. Then a man with a long white beard and a fringe of gray hair around his mostly bald head stepped forwards. Harry hid a sigh. “Is Kingsley in a meeting at the moment, Albert?” he asked.  
  
Albert Whitlow, the most senior member of the Auror Department now that Dawlish had finally given in and retired, said, “No.” He stared past Harry’s shoulder at Draco; in fact, his eyes had been there all along, though Harry had hoped to make Whitlow look at him with his question. “Why have you brought  _him_  here?”  
  
Two Whitlow nephews had died in the Battle of Malfoy Manor, and Albert had lost his only son as well. Harry made sure to reply temperately. “I’m protecting him at the moment, whilst Ron and the others hunt down the man pretending to be him. You may have heard about our recent rash of problems with a Malfoy imposter.”  
  
Whitlow glared at him. He and Harry never had got along, especially because Whitlow thought sarcasm was a kind of ravine. “Don’t get cheeky, Potter,” he said, sharp and low. “Why did you bring him  _here_? You had to know what the sight of him would do to someone like me.”  
  
“The sight of him,” Harry said flatly. “Do you ever listen to yourself?”  
  
Whitlow’s nostrils flared. “You should have known better,” he said. “On all counts. Than to bring him here, and than to challenge me.” He drew his wand.  
  
Harry narrowed his eyes. He knew Whitlow was carrying out several grudges at once—he never had forgiven Harry for sweeping into the Department and taking his old place as Kingsley’s best friend and confidant—but they didn’t have time for this.   
  
Besides, he could feel the pressure of Draco’s eyes against his back like a warm palm. He would be lying if he said he didn’t want to show off for him.   
  
He concentrated.  
  
*  
  
Draco stared intently at the man Potter had called Albert, but he didn’t recognize him. That offended him. If someone considered him an enemy, he should at least know who that person  _was._  
  
Potter reacted with unexpected calm even when this Albert stepped towards him with a drawn wand. His head cocked and he relaxed, breathing deeply. Draco, watching his face in profile, thought he saw his eyelids flutter once or twice.  
  
Then an invisible force snatched Albert’s feet away from him and suspended him from the ceiling by one ankle. His wand clattered to the floor as he grabbed at first his feet and then his robes, trying to prevent them from flying up over his head. Shocked laughter rang down the corridors, though it ceased when Albert began to twist in place, trying frantically to see who had done this to him and who was mocking him. Others, braver, snickered.  
  
Potter took a single step forwards, his eyelids still fluttering and his voice strained. He was using wandless magic to keep Albert on the ceiling, Draco realized then, but it had to be taxing most of the resources in his body. “I have told you not to do that. Bring your personal grudges to me in a formal duel, which can be settled outside the Department. I won’t have you accidentally injuring someone else because you hate  _me_.”  
  
Draco stood frozen, unable to decide how he should respond. His lip did curl when he heard the name Albert hurled at Potter, though. If the man was a pure-blood, he should have been able to find more eloquent insults.  
  
Potter sucked in a breath. Albert abruptly fell a few inches, as if the invisible chain holding him had lengthened. He gave a strangled cry, which prompted more snickers and a few sharp whistles of astonishment.  
  
“Do I have to drop you on your stubborn head,” Potter said, the barest bit of breathiness in his voice, “before you see the truth?”  
  
“All right, Harry,” a deeper voice said, at the same moment as a door clicked open. “I think you’ve made your point.”  
  
Draco glanced up quickly. He’d become so enthralled in watching Potter’s face as he controlled his wandless magic that he’d actually lost track of what was happening around him and hadn’t realized that Shacklebolt had opened the door of his office.  _A bad habit_ , he scolded himself.  _You have to watch, because Potter will be less than helpful if your enemy shows up whilst you’re seducing him._  
  
“Of course, sir,” Potter said with mock humility, and lowered Albert back to the ground. He even turned him upright so that he landed on his feet and not his head. Draco sneered. Potter seemingly couldn’t shed the show of mock righteousness even when he had nothing to gain by continuing to use it.  
  
“Now.” Shacklebolt paused in what he had been about to say when he noticed Draco, but his mouth merely tightened before he continued. “You have important information, Harry? I’m afraid that we learned almost nothing from the interview with Palliser.” He nodded over Draco’s shoulder, presumably dismissing the Aurors who had gathered to watch or arresting Albert’s futile attempt at vengeance. “He couldn’t remember when the guest had come in or how, and he dismantled all the wards around his house after the party.”  
  
“He did? Why?” Potter sounded bewildered as he stepped into the office. Draco followed him, stealing a few swift glances that immediately revealed Britain’s Head Auror did not have the best of taste. He snorted, but under his breath. Weasley, standing behind Shacklebolt’s desk, still glared at him as if he had heard it.  
  
Draco gave him a glance full of venom back. A certain amount of feigned vulnerability would serve him well where Potter was concerned, but he had no reason to want to impress Weasley or keep on his good side.   
  
“I can answer that question,” he said, and kept his eyes on Weasley to enjoy the way his face flushed. “The wards dimmed the outlines of the house when they were as thick in profusion as he wanted them to be. I tried to make him compromise and choose more elegant and smaller wards, but he wouldn’t, at least not on the first night. Now he’s simply dissipated them altogether rather than take the effort of learning new ones.”  
  
Shacklebolt swiveled towards him. “But you know the wards he used last night? You could tell us what they were and give us some sort of clue as to how our—visitor—bypassed them?”  
  
“I can try,” Draco said. “But you’ll have to understand that I didn’t see him arrive. My description of the wards will be perfect, my description of what unusual methods he might have invented to get around them speculative.”  
  
“Of course you didn’t see him come in,” Weasley said, half under his breath, staring at Draco the way Draco had seen some of his owls look at mice. “You were too busy flirting with Harry.”  
  
Draco stared back. “I’m not an Auror, Weasley. Why would it be  _my_  job to watch out for someone with a face like mine, whom  _you’re_  tracking?” He lowered his voice. “Were you disappointed when you found out that Potter insisted on defending me?”  
  
“That is  _enough_ ,” said Shacklebolt, in a voice that made Draco jump. “I will have no bickering in my office, particularly not whilst we work on a case so important. Ron, can you deal with Mr. Malfoy? Or should we pull you off this and put you on a different case?”  
  
Draco looked again at the Head Auror. He stared at only Weasley, tapping his fingers together, an expression of deep disappointment on his face. Draco smoothed away a smile. Obviously Shacklebolt cared about the performance of his people more than the obnoxiousness of the man whose life they were trying to save. That gave Draco all sorts of ideas and made him dream about what else he might be able to get away with.   
  
Weasley muttered something that Shacklebolt seemed to take as an assurance of good behavior, because he nodded briskly and turned back to Potter and Draco. “Describe the wards, please, Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
Draco did so, making sure to emphasize what parts of the house they had covered and how thick they had been. He had his own professional pride, the way that Potter had wanted Draco to stay out of his way whilst he worked to down the madman stalking him. He would not allow Shacklebolt or Weasley to think he had constructed an ugly building, though they might not know enough about architecture to even suspect he had. Weasley would suspect his work on principle, of course.  
  
Potter understood enough to build the Palliser house with and without wards in his mind, Draco suspected. At least, the way he watched Draco with shining eyes indicated he attached more importance to the words than simply seeing them as evidence in the case he was solving.   
  
Draco arched his neck and lifted his shoulder slightly, putting his face in the best profile to Potter. Potter’s breathing deepened and slowed. He leaned forwards as if he would reach out and trace the perfect curve of Draco’s jaw. Draco held still. He could do it if he liked. His hand trembled with the readiness to do it. Draco tried to convey eagerness with the lines of his body, the demure lowering of his eyelids, the pout of his lips.  
  
Potter leaned in a little closer, and then jerked back suddenly. Draco blinked and kept a frown from his face with difficulty. Some people resisted his enchantments, yes, but never with such abruptness.  
  
*  
  
Harry winced and tried to soothe away the sting where Ron’s elbow had collided with the small of his back. For a moment, he wished he hadn’t used enough wandless magic on Whitlow to render himself near-exhausted. It would have been a fine thing to will Ron’s wand to jab him in the side.  
  
“What are you  _doing_?” Ron hissed in his ear. “I know you have some sort of crush on him, but act professional, for Merlin’s sake.”  
  
Harry drew in several deep breaths and nodded. He thought he saw a flash of bewilderment in Draco’s eyes, but then he continued to look straight ahead and answer Kingsley’s questions. Yes, Harry could do at least as well. Draco felt the desire and the pull as strongly as Harry did—Harry knew that for certain after their little tussle on the floor of his office—but that was no reason to act like a rutting bull.  
  
Any liaison they conducted would have to wait until after the case was over. And really, the faster they solved the case, the sooner some of Harry’s dreams could come true. He would never have everything he wanted, because even now he could not imagine Draco holding him gently and running his fingers through Harry’s hair or speaking with him simply and directly about his life with his parents, but he could at least share a physical relationship with him.  
  
And the more he listened, the more worried he grew. Palliser’s wards had not been bloodline wards, and neither had they been the complex ones that lined Draco’s office, both of which the imposter might have learned about because they would give him the knowledge to impersonate Draco more effectively. They  _had_  been difficult enough that it would take some months of study to understand and get past them without alerting the owner of the house. What were the chances that someone would simply happen to have that knowledge?  
  
 _Low_. Harry chewed his lip. The imposter must have learned of what wards Palliser intended to put on his house somehow. Could he have approached Palliser in another guise and then gone to a ward expert for the training he would need? No, even that would not give him long enough. And Harry doubted that Palliser had decided on the wards months in advance, or that he would have felt compelled to give the knowledge away to any random stranger who approached him.  
  
The other important possibility was that the imposter had studied the kinds of wards that Draco had advised his clients to put on their houses in the past, along with Palliser’s personality, and known that he would disobey Draco and use the heavier wards. And if that was the case, then Harry still didn’t understand his psychology, because why show off his knowledge and deadliness by appearing in the middle of the party? And then, if he was so deadly, why hadn’t he managed to kill Draco after all?  
  
It was a mystery so profound that Harry had no idea where to begin investigating it.   
  
 _Of course, your responsibility right now is to protect Draco_ , he reminded himself as Draco finished describing the wards.  _Ron can investigate the imposter._  
  
Kingsley nodded at Draco’s closing words and turned expectantly to Harry. Harry smiled. Kingsley had always been good at telling when one of his Aurors was nearly bursting with news.  
  
“There have been two attacks since,” Harry said quietly. “One last night in Malfoy Manor, one this morning.”  
  
Kingsley folded his hands on the desk and looked grave. Harry began to speak. Kingsley, as always, asked leading questions that pulled out details Harry hadn’t thought he remembered. Why had the burst of magic when the man came through Malfoy Manor’s wards awakened Harry in the first place? Did Harry know why the intruder had attacked through the window of the office and not through the front door, if he could undo the wards in the first place? How long had their battle lasted? Had Harry had the wound in his hand treated?  
  
Startled, Harry glanced at the hole that the intruder’s curse had drilled through the middle of his palm. He winced as he brushed his fingers over the skin. It was hard and high and blistered, like a burn; the spell had cauterized it and no blood had fallen since the fight.  
  
“It doesn’t hurt that much, except when I touch it,” he told Kingsley hopefully.  
  
“Unacceptable,” Kingsley said. “That’s your wand hand. You will visit the Healer on staff and have it taken care of, Potter.”  
  
Harry lowered his eyes and nodded. Kingsley only used his last name when he thought Harry was behaving unreasonably.   
  
“I didn’t realize you were wounded that badly.”  
  
Harry glanced up curiously. Draco’s voice was subdued, and he looked from the corner of his eye at Harry’s hand, as if fascinated against his will. Harry grinned in spite of himself. Being scolded in front of his best friend and his obsession was worth it if it got said obsession to worry about him.  
  
Ron must have noticed the expression on his face and correctly interpreted it. His hand crushed down on Harry’s elbow. Harry ignored it for the moment so that he could say to Kingsley, “I’ll be sure to stop by the Healer’s office before I go back to Malfoy Manor, sir.”  
  
“That’s an excellent idea,” said Ron, in a brilliant, brittle voice that wouldn’t have fooled anyone who knew him. “Why don’t we go right now? I’ve been meaning to get the Healer to take a look at this cough of mine.” He hacked dramatically and then began dragging Harry towards the door of the office.   
  
“Ron,” Harry hissed under his breath, trying to twist his arm away from his friend.  
  
“I think Ron’s right, Harry.” Kingsley gave him a bland, beaming face when Harry glared at him in return. “It would be a shame if your productivity were to suffer because you couldn’t be arsed to take care of yourself. And do get that cough seen to, Ron. I’m sure it threatens the safety of the people of Great Britain.”  
  
“Yes, sir!” Ron saluted smartly and then went on dragging Harry away.   
  
Kingsley turned back towards Draco. Harry bit the inside of his cheek. Of course, he wasn’t worried about Kingsley physically hurting Draco the way he was worried about someone like Whitlow doing. But he still felt as though he needed to be present to defend Draco from anything untoward, up to and including Auror interrogation. And Kingsley, with his mild probing questions and stiff face, could be worse than some of the more practiced interrogators.  
  
“Your little crush will be fine, Harry,” Ron said, and hauled him away. People got discreetly out of their path. Ron was more even-tempered than he had been at Hogwarts, but he was a large man, and when he did get angry no one wanted to attract his attention. “Come with me and let’s see the nice Healer.”  
  
Harry put up with the dragging until they were around the corner. Then he ripped his arm away from Ron with a viciousness that sent him staggering. Ron whirled around, his eyebrows bent, his teeth marking his lip as he stared at Harry.  
  
“What’s got into you?” Harry asked, lowering his voice only because he would prefer that other people not know of their private quarrels. He wasn’t ashamed of the relationship he might develop with Draco when this case was over, and nothing could make him be.   
  
“What’s got into you?” Ron countered, and there was no shadow of a smile on his face to show he was teasing. “Harry, I’ve never seen you behave so irresponsibly. Has it escaped your notice that you’re there to protect him, not to fuck him?”  
  
Harry choked. Ron didn’t swear on a regular basis. Finally he managed to say, “I know that. In fact, he’s aware of my desire for him, and he feels the same way, but we both accepted that we should wait until this case was over.”  
  
“And yet, you can’t,” said Ron. “If the way that you were looking at him in front of  _your boss_  was any indication.”   
  
Harry flushed and stared at the floor. Yes, he was ashamed of that part. He had to be able to control himself. What would Draco think of him if Harry made a promise and then broke it because his libido got to be too much? He ought to keep his mind on something other than sex for more than ten minutes.  
  
Ron spoke on, his voice flat and merciless. “You spend too much time staring at him, you won’t notice what’s around you. You spend too much time thinking about shagging him, you won’t spend enough time thinking about our criminal and what his next move is. And this is a case where thinking is necessary.” His voice softened. “Harry, mate. I really can’t do this without you. I need you to help me think.”  
  
“You’re not stupid, Ron,” Harry said quietly, looking up.  
  
“No.” Ron took a step towards him. “But I also don’t work as well on my own as I do when I’m partnered with you. It’s one thing to be separated from you for a while because you’re the only one Malfoy trusts to guard him. But I want you to come back safe so that we can go on other cases together.”  
  
Harry muttered, “Yeah, I know.”  
  
Ron gripped his shoulders and smiled into his eyes. “You’re being stupid. You know that too, don’t you?”  
  
Harry nodded. There were signs of it, signs he should have heeded. He hadn’t ignored his wounds since the first year of Auror training—bloody hell, since the first year of the war. He would have gone and healed them at once if he were on any other case. Malfoy could have come with him to St. Mungo’s, as he’d followed him to the Ministry, or Harry could have placed him back in the care of the Manor—  
  
 _Which is not so safe after all, if the intruder can come through the wards._  
  
The problem was, he needed to treat Malfoy like any other victim, but Malfoy wasn’t any other victim to him. Malfoy was shining hair and shining eyes and a shining skill that built houses out of air and sun and earth.   
  
“You’re wandering off after him in your mind again,” Ron said in disgust. “I know that look.” Harry blinked and focused on him. Ron lightly slapped his cheek. “Think of all the sex you can have with him  _after_  you both survive.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. Yes. He had to think of Malfoy’s safety first. His distraction might wound him, and he could survive that, but what would he feel if he killed Malfoy because he was too busy admiring the way he looked to notice danger creeping up on them?  
  
“Good.” Ron slapped his shoulder this time. “And wear your ring. Hermione’s been driving me mad, wanting to know why you took it off.”  
  
“She should have asked me, not you,” Harry said.  
  
“That’s what  _I_  said!”  
  
Harry laughed, and he and Ron went on to the Healer, sharing jokes about all the things Hermione had to worry her until doomsday. Harry felt his worries melting and sliding down his shoulders, dissolving like clots of snow under rain. He wanted Malfoy, yes, but he had missed this, too, this easy companionship he had never found with anyone but his best friend. It was good to be back.   
  
*  
  
“I could offer you Aurors more trained than Harry,” Shacklebolt said softly, in a voice that was the soul of persuasion, “more skilled.”  
  
“I don’t want them,” Draco said back, his voice just as soft.  
  
“I could offer you an Auror who would be that trained and that skilled, and yet not try to hurt you.” Shacklebolt leaned across the desk. He had eyes that he probably used to compel his inferiors into obedience, Draco thought; hadn’t he sent Potter away like a shamed child? “You need fear no grudges from us.”  
  
“I want Potter.”  
  
 _No one but Potter has ever mattered. Can’t you understand that? You praise him as the best, and that’s why I have to break him. A victory over him will be a victory over all of you, because it will show you how empty the idol is that you’ve worshipped, how hollow the ideals that you followed. You believed in him because he won you the war, but he’s only a man, after all. That’s what I want to show you._  
  
Draco clenched his hands into fists and fought to keep them from drumming on his knees. Strange, that everyone should be so blind to Potter, believe sincerely in the façade he showed the world, and yet not understand that of course Draco would need to tear down that façade to have any peace at all.  
  
Shacklebolt sighed heavily. “If you’re sure, Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
“I’ve never been this sure of anything in my life,” Draco said, and rose to his feet and strode out of the office.  
  
 _I want Potter_ , said every beat of his heart.  _To break, to destroy, to consume, to wrap myself around._  
  
 _To have, and hold, and keep._


	9. Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

_Finally! I was worried about you._  
  
Harry smiled a little as he sat back in the chair in Malfoy’s office. Of course Malfoy had decided to return there, ignoring the shattered window and the curious looks of the people who passed by on the street, and finish working on the designs for Keller’s house. He had emphasized to Harry that he expected no more clients, so he should be in less danger. Harry had politely refrained from expressing his opinion that with an enemy who could cause such breaches in his wards, there was no way he could be absolutely safe.   
  
It did make it easier to have a conversation with Hermione even as he fulfilled his bodyguard duties, though. Watching the back of Malfoy’s head as he crouched over a set of plans was much less fascinating than watching as Malfoy engaged one of his clients in conversation.   
  
 _I wasn’t gone all that long, Hermione_ , he answered.  _What, twelve hours altogether that I had the ring off?  
  
But it sounds like plenty happened in those twelve hours_, Hermione said at once. She paused, and Harry could practically hear her rearranging her robes as she tried to keep herself from saying something about how stupid he had been. Harry grinned and studied the way Malfoy’s foot thumped on the floor as he scribed particularly hard over a stubborn line. He didn’t mind a lecture or two, but far funnier was listening to the ways in which Hermione tried to avoid them.  _And has being in close contact with Malfoy destroyed your illusions?  
  
He’s not everything I thought he was_. A wisp of crackling magic from the broken wards drifted towards Malfoy’s hair; he sent it away with a wave of his hand, not looking up. Harry couldn’t have done that. He was so sensitive to magic that he would have to either move or banish the stray spell with his wand.  _He handles his clients by insulting them, at least the important ones, and making it clear how much more he knows than they do. I thought he was always polite and charming.  
  
I could have told you he wasn’t_. Hermione sniffed.  _After all, I’ve heard those reports about him._  
  
Harry grunted. Supposedly, Hermione had been witness to many people starting to bring cases against Malfoy for public insults, suspected crimes, or bad-luck spells that had plagued them for weeks before abruptly ceasing. There was never enough proof to arrest him, and frankly Harry thought the cause of those complaints was more likely to be envy than anything substantial. Malfoy had poured so much time and money into his architecture business that Harry couldn’t see him risking his good name for a tiny bit of vengeance.  
  
 _Ron mentioned something about your flirting with him, too.  
  
Ron should keep his nose in his own bloody business_, Harry said irritably, and shifted so that he could concentrate on something other than the memory of how Malfoy had looked in Kingsley’s office.  
  
 _Ron is your friend_. Hermione’s voice softened instead of sharpened, which Harry thought would have been the next logical course for it to take.  _Harry, we’re your friends, and we’re worried about you, that’s all. I really do believe that Malfoy’s no good. He may not have staged this imposter’s attacks—  
  
Is that what you think_? Harry shook his head.  _You didn’t see his dismay when this last attack smashed an expensive window in his office. I don’t think he would sacrifice things he finds beautiful to some elaborate plan that doesn’t even have a defined goal.  
  
I had to give up on the notion when I realized I had no idea what his goal would be, either_, Hermione said.  _But maybe Auror notice, or your notice, was what he was after in the first place. He’s not the man attacking him, no, but couldn’t he be in league with him? Paying him, maybe? It would explain how that man knows how to get past the Malfoy bloodline wards and the wards on his office._  
  
Harry sighed gustily. He hadn’t considered that possibility, and he really should have. It was simpler than many of the other explanations Harry had come up with in the privacy of his mind, which involved surviving Time-Turners and extensive conspiracies.  
  
But Hermione hadn’t been with Malfoy during the attacks. She hadn’t seen the sincere terror on his face when the imposter went after him, or the bruises of fingers on his throat.  
  
 _Think about it_ , Hermione said.  _That’s all I ask. I want you to be happy, Harry, and I don’t think Malfoy can make you so. If he could, I would be one of the first to support you_. A sensation traveled down Harry’s arm as if she were gently squeezing his hand.  
  
 _I’ll think about it_ , Harry said.  _I just can’t promise an ending that you like, that’s all_. And he raised his head and watched Malfoy working again, his hair fluffed and shining around him.   
  
*  
  
Draco stood with a long stretch of his arms at last. He’d spent several hours in the office, working on the Keller house and on two other projects he’d promised himself he would get to this week. He thought he deserved this break, since neither he nor Potter had eaten lunch, and in fact he didn’t plan to return to the office today.  
  
When he looked up, he discovered Potter studying the broken window and the edges of the drifting wards with speculative eyes. “You still haven’t figured out how he broke in?” he asked, adding a challenging tone to his voice. It wouldn’t do to have Potter think that Draco would yield and be gentler simply because Potter had discovered Draco’s attraction to him.  
  
“I thought I would leave that to you, since it’s your window and your wards.” Potter turned to him with a gentle smile. Then he winced, as though someone had stung him, but when Draco cast a subtle spell to test the office for insects, he found nothing. It seemed the repellent spells were still working, then. “Did you want to eat in Diagon Alley, or go back to the Manor? Your house-elves’ cooking is better than that in most restaurants I’ve eaten at, to be honest.”  
  
Draco laughed. “Don’t let Granger hear you say that.”  
  
“Oh, she would admit it’s the truth.” Potter leaned forwards, his eyes shining as if he wanted to make a point about Granger with the next words, though Draco had no idea what it would be. “She would just insist they should be paid.”  
  
Draco shuddered. “That really is a revolting idea, Potter, and for reasons you don’t understand,” he murmured, as they stepped out of the office. Draco made a point of locking the wards behind him, although the window would provide a point of entrance. Experienced thieves would notice the tracking spells that would latch onto their clothing, though, and probably leave well enough alone, especially when word spread that Harry Potter was protecting Draco.  
  
“Why? Tell me.”   
  
Draco narrowed his eyes, but Potter looked genuinely interested. It was an expression Draco had seen in photographs and from other impossible distances, and had wanted directed at him since he realized the best way to defeat Potter was to lure him close. It made his groin tighten. He inclined his head slowly.  
  
“House-elves  _are_  service, the best standard for it,” he said. “They’re not slaves because they aren’t human. It would be like saying that the Hogwarts Express is a slave because it’s driven to the school several times a year instead of being left to rust. They’re  _for_  cooking and cleaning and other menial tasks. You insult a thousand years of wizarding tradition when you offer to pay them.”  
  
“I notice that you don’t say you insult them,” Potter said softly. Gazes followed them, of course, the famous architect and the even more famous Auror, but Potter appeared to ignore them effortlessly. “Hermione would say that.”  
  
“You can’t insult a machine,” said Draco. “But you can spit on the culture and heritage of the people who surround you, and that’s what your Mu—Muggleborn friend is doing.”  
  
“I can’t think of them as machines,” Potter said. He had his head bowed, and a tiny breeze stroked a curl of his dark hair away from his forehead, revealing the scar. Even more people turned to stare at them. Draco felt a different kind of tightness invade his chest. Potter had arranged to display his scar that way, of course, but still, did everyone have to  _look_? “They feel pain. They make their own choices. Dobby, one of your old house-elves, saved my life during the war, and before that he acted to try and make sure I didn’t go to Hogwarts when he thought I was in danger. If he had that independence, other house-elves might.”  
  
Draco dug his fingernails into the skin above his wrist.  _Dobby, yes. I remember that, and Father’s absolutely blank expression when he came back to the Manor and told me that we’d lost one of our elves. Yet another debt I have to repay Potter for._  
  
“Occasionally you get a mad elf, the same way you occasionally get a machine that breaks,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you should coddle every elf on the off-chance that it’ll turn out like Dobby.”  
  
“What about because it would make them work for you more willingly?” Potter looked up at him again. His eyes hit Draco like a Bludger to the gut. There was so  _much_  in them, so much emotion to absorb and twist and break.  
  
“ _Will_  has nothing to do with it,” said Draco, trying not to sound as if he were startled that Potter could be rational. “House-elves have no will, by the terms of their servitude.”  
  
“And yet, Dobby did.” Potter cocked his head as he swept sideways into a small alcove in the wall of Diagon Alley, and Draco blinked, realizing just then that they never had actually settled whether they were eating at a restaurant or going back to the Manor for a meal. And here was Potter simply escorting him into a restaurant, as if it weren’t a matter of importance at all. He tried to be angry about that, but Potter’s words demanded his attention insistently, naggingly, the way that Potter had always demanded it. “Long before I had any chance to give him clothes or intervene with his servitude in any way. What do you make of that?”  
  
“He was defective, I told you,” Draco said.  
  
“But you said that no house-elf could have free will, and he did. There’s a chance that other elves can as well, but because you won’t listen to them—“  
  
“Are we actually going somewhere?” Draco locked his feet, because the smaller alley before them had run out into a dead end, a blank wall towering above a grime-covered expanse of cobblestones.  
  
“What?” Potter glanced up and then grinned sheepishly. “Oh. Sorry. I forgot that you can’t see it yet because you haven’t been here before.” He held out his hand to Draco and wriggled it impatiently when Draco only stared. “Come on. Take it.”  
  
Biting back a retort and several images of exactly what he would like to take, Draco asked, “What?”  
  
“The restaurant isn’t visible unless you’re invited or enter with someone who has been.” Potter ginned at him, not seeming at all intimidated by the thundercloud Draco could feel gathering on his brow. “I don’t think Faustine would ever invite you of her own free will, so that leaves this way.”  
  
This time, Draco bit back a sigh and put his hand in Potter’s. Potter, like the overgrown schoolboy he was, moved his fingers back and forth across Draco’s palm for a moment, despite his having been the one to put a definite time to when they could have sex. Draco shivered in distaste.  
  
 _He really is an overgrown schoolboy. It will be a positive pleasure to break him._  
  
The air in front of them flashed blue and gold, and Draco couldn’t help stepping back and making a startled noise in his throat. He hadn’t seen wards that brilliant in some time. Potter clasped an arm around his waist and whispered into his ear, “It’s all right. Faustine has some rather impressive defenses, but they won’t attack anyone with me.”  
  
The wards still surged and sang around them, clanging like swords, for long moments before they settled, and Draco found himself standing on the threshold of a restaurant with large stone doors, inset with glass, and silvery lettering above them that proclaimed the restaurant was called the Imperatrix.  
  
“Come on,” Potter said, and surged forwards, an eager smile distending his mouth. Draco rolled his eyes and followed with a face as blank and neutral as possible.   
  
Of course, he could hardly show the new determination that had arisen in him. If the food here really was better than the food at the Manor, then he would need to learn how long Potter had been coming here. His desire to eat good food in such a private place might be a sign that he took advantage of his fame after all.   
  
And Draco would need to learn what food he ate here, and what his relationship with the owner was, and why Draco had never noticed that Potter was vanishing at a certain spot in Diagon Alley before…  
  
 _All eventual ways to defeat him. Any detail could be the key I need._  
  
*  
  
“Harry.”  
  
Faustine sailed to meet him across the enormous flagstone floor of the Imperatrix, more like a courtyard than anything that belonged inside. The enchanted ceiling supported the illusion, just as it did in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, projecting a vision of a glittering blue Mediterranean sky. The walls were as purely white as the old Roman ruins must have been when they were new.  
  
Harry kissed Faustine’s cheek, and she smiled at him. They were of a height and had hair the same dark shade, though Faustine had such a pointed face, such narrow dark eyes, and such a collection of scars on her hands that no one would ever mistake them for cousins. She wore a carefully folded and draped set of strips of cloth approximating the dress of a Roman matron and sandals that showed golden paint flashing on her toenails. A golden choker clasped her throat in the shape of a snake biting its own tail, which Harry knew was keyed to Apparate her to safety in the case of hostile magic manifesting inside the restaurant. He had never learned her last name.  
  
“Faustine, allow me to introduce Draco Malfoy,” he said, and stepped back to stand between them. Malfoy looked ahead with murderously hard gray eyes, which Harry blinked at. Surely he couldn’t be  _that_  angry that he’d never been invited to the restaurant before? Harry had never been sure of Faustine’s stance on blood politics—it was one of those things they didn’t discuss—but he knew she made all her own decisions about who to invite. He’d seen people on both sides of the war there.  
  
 _No former Death Eaters, though._  
  
But if Faustine was getting ready to throw Malfoy out of the Imperatrix in the next moment, she did not look it. She simply held out her hand to him and nodded as if in response to unheard music. “You have been brought through the wards by an invited guest, and you will now be able to find this place again,” she said. Another woman had appeared behind her, wearing similar dress, although she had blonde hair braided with flowers and probably looked more like the ideal of a Roman maiden. Faustine made a sharp movement with her head in Malfoy’s direction. “Quinta, if you will take our newest guest to a table? I have something to speak about with Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry felt his shoulders tense. He knew what that meant. Faustine was one of the people he had met through charity functions who had turned out to be impressed by more than his Galleons and the power of his name. She watched the happenings in social circles Harry had no easy access to and reported them to him when she thought they concerned either him or the Aurors. It was an informal spy network—and Harry hated referring to it as a “spy” network anyway—but it had provided information that had saved his life several times, and Ron more times than he knew.  
  
 _Be careful, Harry_ , Hermione said, the way she always did when he went to the Imperatrix. She didn’t trust Faustine.  
  
Harry sent back wordless thoughts of reassurance and followed Faustine into a back room behind one of the pillars standing in front of the walls. Faustine turned around and leaned her hands on a blocky desk of black stone, staring him in the eyes. Her fingernails were dusted with gold paint, too, Harry noted absently.  
  
“What is it?” he demanded, as he realized that Faustine’s eyes hadn’t wavered. She had looked like that when there was an assassination plot against him, but at no other time.  
  
“You’re protecting Draco Malfoy,” she said quietly. “Someone’s already noticed. One of my girls heard two patrons discussing it today, and not in complimentary tones. Already people are starting to speculate why, since you were known enemies during the war.”  
  
Harry blinked. This didn’t sound dangerous to him. “What were the speculations? And the real reason is that Malfoy only trusts me to guard his back because I saved his life at Palliser’s party last night.”  
  
“Thank you,” said Faustine. “I’ll introduce that reason into conversation as soon as I can. But you should be more careful.” She cocked her head and gave him the kindest look that her fox-like face was capable of giving. “I’m not the only one who’s seen you standing outside Malfoy’s office and watching, Harry.”  
  
Harry felt his spine stiffen. The ring on his finger warmed for a moment, and Hermione whispered,  _Oh, Harry, I’m sorry_ , into his mind.  
  
“I have observed him, that’s true,” Harry said, determined to face this out if he could. “The man impersonating him has committed several crimes, and it was natural that we should suspect Mr. Malfoy as well.”  
  
Faustine shook her head, eyes fastened on his face. “The expression you wear and the amount of time you spend there is too much for an Auror who has other investigates to tend to. And your observation started before the crimes did, though I might be the only one who would notice that.” She looked away for a moment and waited, as though she wanted to give Harry time to collect his wits. Then she said, “I’ve noticed it before, how you stare at the  _Prophet_  longer than normal when they do an article on one of Malfoy’s houses, how your gaze is drawn to anyone entering the Imperatrix who has the same hair he does, and how you turn your head at any mention of his name in conversation. Tell me. Is the attraction sheer physicality, or does it go deeper than that?”  
  
 _Well, this is what you get for spending so much time around an intelligent and observant woman_ , Harry told himself wryly when he’d caught his breath.  _And if she wasn’t so good, then you’d lack half the information she contributes to your cause_. “It’s deeper,” he said aloud. He wouldn’t lie about his attraction to Malfoy when he was confronted over it, though he could wish Faustine had remained oblivious some time longer. “I’d like to spend time in bed with him, sure, but more than that I’d like to hear him talk about houses and how he builds them, have arguments with him over house-elf rights and watch the way he behaves at parties.”  
  
Faustine’s gaze was steady and emotionless; Harry couldn’t tell if she disapproved of what he’d just confessed. “Some might term that obsession.”  
  
“I do term it that,” said Harry. “And so do my best friends.”  
  
 _You do_? Hermione asked, sounding startled.  _It’s news to me that you’d admit to it._  
  
Faustine’s eyebrows rose. She stared at him for another few moments, then nodded. “I suspect you have wondered why I never invited him here.”  
  
“For the same reason you never invited his father, or Severus Snape, or Walden Macnair, I thought,” Harry said. He could meet her gaze now. She wasn’t about to storm into the next room and throw Malfoy out, or tell Harry he couldn’t return because of his obsession. That was good enough for now.  
  
“Ah, but he has a fame and a social acceptability that the others do not.” Faustine made a quick gesture over her breast that Harry hadn’t seen before. It reminded him uneasily of someone plucking a heart from a chest. “I wished to remind myself, always, of what he was and had been. I could see myself succumbing too easily to his charm if I was in close quarters with hm.” She blinked once. “I sometimes wondered if I was being paranoid. And then I realized when I saw your face as you looked at him that no, I was not.”  
  
“I hope you’ll accept him as much as you can.” Harry didn’t dare ask for more than that. He and Faustine were friends, but not close friends, in the way he was with Hermione and Ron.  
  
 _I should hope that someone who runs a restaurant like hers isn’t someone you would consider a close friend_ , Hermione muttered.  
  
Harry ignored her. The rumors of the business that Faustine ran out of the back of the Imperatrix were only rumors, and until he was compelled to investigate them, he wouldn’t. He could offer that much safety and security to his friends.   
  
“It may be difficult.” Faustine stared at him. “Do remember that people will always gossip about the man who saved the world they live in, but that some kinds of gossip are more damaging than others. And the hurt someone like Draco Malfoy could do to you is greater than the hurt I could.”  
  
Harry nodded. He didn’t think Malfoy was a  _good_  person, not particularly. On the other hand, his fascination with the man wasn’t about to depart.  
  
“Now.” Faustine waved her wand, and pieces of parchment came flying from all over the room to assemble into a neat pile in the middle of her desk. “This is the news I’ve collected for you in the past fortnight. You might be especially interested in the rumors of what the Notts are doing to reestablish themselves…”  
  
*  
  
Draco looked around again and again as he sat at the table that the young woman had guided him to, and tried to hide that he was doing so. Luckily, he was very good at sneaking glances from beneath eyelids that anyone else would think were lowered in utter boredom.   
  
The architecture of the Imperatrix hummed with magic, even around the ornamental pillars that Draco would have banished from the restaurant as useless—unnecessary for support and not adding greatly to the ambience. The mosaics and murals and frescoes on the walls shone with delicate, unusual colors, forcing Draco’s eye to try and read meaning into what at many points looked like abstract designs. He could hear the sea when he listened, a good approximation of the waves rushing and hissing in the distance.  
  
And all of this was a place that he had had no idea existed. All of this was a place where Potter spent his time, enough time, at least, to have made a dear friend of the owner.  
  
Draco tried to fold his arms and breathe out carefully, but he was trembling. He wanted nothing so much as to knock down several of the pillars with a blast of wandless magic—though he was not powerful enough for that—or to otherwise scratch and mar the restaurant’s beauty. Jealousy and anger bit him with sharp teeth.  
  
Because of this place, there was a hole in his understanding of Potter. He should have known about this, and he didn’t. Potter wasn’t sneaky, so it was the restaurant’s wards and the owner’s secrecy that were to blame. Potter could have done unusual things here, showed unusual emotions, and Draco never would have known.  
  
Draco’s resolve hardened. No matter what happened in the next few weeks whilst the Auror remained with him, he would make  _sure_  he understood Potter inside and out, that he knew exactly what kind of person he was shattering.  
  
And he would have to have a concrete plan to achieve that.  
  
As Potter appeared again from behind a pillar and walked towards him, smiling, Draco put that plan into motion.


	10. Therefore To Be Won

Malfoy lifted his head and smiled at him when Harry came towards his table. Harry paused, arrested. The smile wasn’t the most brilliant or dazzling that he’d ever seen Malfoy give, but it was only to be expected that he would smile at his clients and at a man he’d kissed in different ways.  
  
“Will you forgive me?” Malfoy asked, barely parting his lips.  
  
“For what?” Harry sat down across from him, eyes never leaving him. One of Faustine’s girls brought them a delicately etched tablet of beaten gold that served as the menu. Harry pushed it aside. At the moment, he had no real appetite, and wouldn’t until he’d figured out what Malfoy was playing at.   
  
 _So all your friends warn you, and your allies warn you, and you don’t take the warning seriously until Malfoy himself does something?_  Hermione released a sound rather like a horse’s snort in his head.  _That would fit with his presence at the center of your world._  
  
Malfoy reached across the table to him. Harry let the other man take his hand, but kept an uneasy eye on the way those fingers curved around his own. They looked strong and gentle at the same time, as if Malfoy knew exactly what would be required to maintain a hold on Harry. Harry clenched his own fingers to keep from reaching back or drawing away, both of which would probably be unfortunate moves at this point.  
  
“I haven’t behaved as graciously as I could have since you saved my life at Palliser’s party.” Malfoy bowed his head, the movement as slow and dream-like as the movement of reeds underwater. His hair tumbled past his cheeks, leaving Harry to watch his brow and the shape of the bones around his eyes. “I’ve insulted you and argued with you and not thanked you often enough.” He lifted his head and gave Harry a tense little smile. “I deal badly with my life being in danger, even though I should have expected it. The past never really leaves you alone.”  
  
“So you suspect this imposter is hunting you because of something that happened during the war?” Harry asked. His voice sounded loud and jarring after Malfoy’s polished, soft tones. He didn’t care. Something had changed, something had gone wrong, and if he didn’t know what it was, then he couldn’t protect Malfoy, or possibly himself, against it when it exploded.   
  
“Probably,” Malfoy said. “Or he could have been hired by a disappointed client, though I think most of the people I’ve worked for would avoid something so—crass.” His fingers slid up and down the lines in Harry’s palm, as if admiring them. “The point is that this place has made me realize you exist as more than a glorified bodyguard to me, and I’ve been ignoring that in my determination to resent your presence. Why should I resent it? You’re giving up your time and ordinary life to protect me.”  
  
“Why would this place make you realize it?” Harry glanced around, but scolding moral lessons carved in gilt letters failed to emerge on the Imperatrix’s walls and ceiling.  
  
Malfoy spoke slowly. He had let go of Harry’s hand and now folded his own hands on the table in front of him, staring at his knuckles. Perhaps the moral message that had convinced him was written there, Harry thought. His own breath was far too short, his limbs liable to tremble. He crossed his legs and stuck his hands beneath the table so that Malfoy would be less likely to notice.  
  
“I didn’t know a restaurant like this existed,” Malfoy said. “I didn’t know you would have access to it if it did, and yet you took the owner’s hands as if you were at home here.”  
  
“I’ve been here many times, and Faustine is fond of me,” said Harry shortly. His temper was rising. He didn’t understand why. Was it only because he suspected Malfoy of lying? Surely he’d lied before, about many things. One more deception shouldn’t make that much difference. And he’d wanted Malfoy to be friendly, hadn’t he?  
  
 _That’s what it is_ , he decided suddenly.  _I want this too much. I want to believe this is real, but I can’t._  
  
“But it showed a different side of you.” Malfoy lifted his head with the same slowness he’d used to bow it earlier, and his eyes shone with a pale, wary light. Perhaps he was as afraid of rejection as Harry was of this being a trap, Harry decided. “Someone who’s comfortable in the places of the great, someone who’s learned to live with his name if not to like it. You have friendships with people I didn’t know about, people who aren’t Weasley and Granger.” His voice twisted on their names, and Harry frowned. Did Malfoy  _still_  retain that mad hatred for his friends? Maybe the feud between the Weasley and Malfoy families accounted for it, but Harry had never understood why he hated Hermione so much.  
  
“You’re bigger than my mind can encompass, at least in one aspect.” Malfoy moved his hands helplessly, as if he were trying to shape an outline of Harry in the air.  _He’s more skilled at building houses than he is at building people_ , Harry thought. “That means that I might have been wrong in others. I’ve been treating you, and thinking of you, at least in part as if you were the boy I knew.” He bit his lip. “Maybe you’re a man.”  
  
“I certainly hope you think of me as a man for one reason,” said Harry, unable to help himself.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes lowered demurely. “And that, too,” he said. “I was thinking of it as a trick when you claimed you wanted to kiss me, and then as pure lust and desire. There are people who look at me that way.” It was said without a trace of bragging, and Harry nodded. Of course Malfoy would know how handsome he was. “But—it’s sincere, isn’t it?” He looked at Harry with the caution in his eyes increased.  
  
“Of course it is,” Harry said. “Did you think I was lying?”  
  
“Let’s say,” Malfoy said, his own fingers tapping the menu in front of Harry, “that I couldn’t  _believe_  you weren’t lying, before. Or I didn’t dare to believe it.”  
  
Harry narrowed his eyes. He could believe that, but at the same time, he didn’t know if he  _should.  
  
Of course you shouldn’t_, Hermione hissed in his head, sounding agitated.  _For God’s sake, Harry, do you really think this sudden change in personality is sincere? This is Malfoy. He’s talented and charming, I’ll give him that, but he only uses both of those to get what he wants.  
  
Is it really so impossible that he could want me_? Harry asked, abruptly tired of Hermione’s perspective. She was probably right, but did she have to be right all the time? He touched the copper ring, wondering if it was time to take it off again.  _And that he’d treat me well once he had me?  
  
The second, yes_. Hermione’s voice grew gentle.  _I’m sorry if you think I’m nagging, Harry, but I’ve seen the way you look at him. He has the power to hurt you in a way that even Penelope didn’t, because Penelope never filled your dreams as he does. If I can remind you of what he’s really like and stop you from walking blindly off a cliff, then that’s what I’ll do._  
  
Harry nodded, resigned to his fate. For now, he would leave the ring on. His friends cared for him.  
  
It was just that Hermione’s way of doing it was bloody  _annoying_.  
  
But Malfoy had begun to speak again. Now he was looking at the Imperatrix’s ornamental pillars. Harry wondered what he thought of them, since they served no important architectural purpose. “There have been plenty of people after me in the last few years who only wanted to say they’d slept with me for the thrill of sleeping with a Malfoy, or a former Death Eater.” He laughed darkly for a moment. “You wouldn’t believe how many of them wanted to touch the Dark Mark, or asked me breathless questions about my mother’s death. Several of them I threw out of bed the moment that happened and cast a charm that prevented them from having sex comfortably for weeks.”  
  
Harry felt a stirring of sympathy that seemed to make both his bones and his blood vibrate at once. Yes, he knew all about lovers who turned out to want him only for his fame, even if they were often kinder than it sounded like Draco’s lovers were to Draco.  
  
“None of them have ever appreciated the art of my profession like you have.” Draco looked up at him, and his eyes had acquired a gentle, vulnerable shine that made Harry’s hands twitch with the urge to comfort him. “None of them have ever made an effort to look into my soul in the same way you have. And I simply can’t suspect you of seduction for the sake of sex, not when I make myself look at my assumptions.” He licked his lips. “It’s a risk to trust you like this, but I think I will.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath. “You can wait to make the decision,” he said. “We won’t be having sex until the case is done, remember?”  
  
But his heart was beating with wild joy, in a way he thought might have leaked through his calm words.  _Part of him is what I always wanted him to be, always suspected he was: capable of more tender feelings and open affection than the façade he shows the world. And I was the one to discover that. I’m honored._  
  
*  
  
Draco snarled, but the snarl was buried so far back in his mind that he knew no trace of it showed in his expression. He bowed his head again and murmured, “Of course. I do keep forgetting that, especially when you look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.”  
  
For the first time since they’d entered the restaurant, Potter reached out for him. His hand took Draco’s hesitantly, as if he imagined Draco would pull away at any moment, even after his humiliating confession. Draco held still and let his hand be turned around and examined. He even managed a faint smile, though the real source of his amusement was no more visible than the snarl. Potter was not good enough at Divination to read the truth from the lines on Draco’s palm.  
  
“I’ll try to stop looking at you with desire, if it makes you uncomfortable.” Potter’s voice was low, his eyes wide and utterly sincere.  
  
Draco fought to keep from closing his fingers and crushing Potter’s hand in his fist like someone crushing a butterfly. Instead, he allowed his grip to start out tentative and slowly grow firm. “You don’t have to,” he whispered. “In fact, it gives me something to look forwards to, once the imposter is stopped. I’ve been alone for too long. I need sex with a lover who I know won’t betray me at the first chance.”  
  
He dared to look up at last and found Potter watching him with adoration softening the edges of his mouth. More important, though, was the  _belief_  written on his face, which Draco reveled in. If Potter accepted his story, especially after the shaky beginning when Draco had said it was Potter’s friendship with the Imperatrix’s owner that convinced him, then Draco’s plan had begun to unfold.  
  
Keeping Potter at a distance wouldn’t work, not when Draco’s own desires were playing into the situation. Treating him in a merely friendly manner would probably encourage Potter to think he had the upper hand and could take advantage of Draco—which was not conducive to making him realize, as Draco did eventually mean to make him realize, that he was Draco’s utter inferior. But seducing him with confessions and soft hesitations and apparent vulnerability would draw Potter close and make him gentle. It would also make Draco seem helpless, or at least that was the effect Draco  _hoped_  it would have.   
  
And the effect would be all the more devastating when “soft, helpless” Draco turned on Potter like a serpent and stung him.  
  
Potter might feel a certain fascination for him, but Draco needed more than that. He needed belief, acceptance, and the desire to protect him without its becoming the desire to dominate. He  _would_  have all of that in the end, because he would keep showing Potter things to admire about him and reeling him in closer and closer, rather like a spider drawing a fly on the end of its string.   
  
For now, Potter nodded and whispered, “I’ve dreamed of sex with a lover who won’t betray me, either.”  
  
Draco bit his tongue sharply to keep from laughing, and planted a shy kiss on Potter’s knuckles. That made his face light up as if someone had placed a sun behind it. Draco stroked his hand and leaned back in his chair.   
  
“What’s the best meal to eat here?” he murmured, which gave Potter a chance to show off his knowledge of the Imperatrix.  
  
Draco watched Potter throughout the meal with a smug knowledge growing inside him, heavy as a weight of chocolate biscuits eaten all at once.  
  
 _He’ll think he’s seducing me, but the seduction works the other way. He’ll chase me until I catch him._  
  
*  
  
Lucius reached out and brushed the cover of the book with trembling fingers. He barely controlled the instinct to snatch his hand back and cradle it against his stomach when the spark of a ward leaped from the leather and stung him. The protections Narcissa had put on her diaries lingered still.  
  
But years after her death, and years after the first time Lucius had broken the wards in his desperation to understand his wife’s final decisions, they were so weak that a spark was the best they could give off. Lucius could have removed the magic entirely, but he didn’t want to. A bit of pain was his penance for reading these books in the first place.  
  
He flipped the cover open. It was leather rendered soft with a potion before being wrapped around the book. Lucius knew it wasn’t human skin, and that it wasn’t softened dragonhide, both of which he would have recognized. However, no expert he’d shown the cover to had been able to tell him more than that. One  _did_  say that it looked like treated unicorn hide to him, but Lucius had rejected the idea. Not even those who wanted to make an enormous profit would take the risk of killing a unicorn and incurring the curse that came from doing so, and it was unlikely that someone would have come upon a unicorn safely dead but with the skin still intact enough to use.   
  
The pages inside the book were made of thick, creamy paper, with frilled blue edges stained with an ink that Lucius hadn’t managed to identify either. They looked like new shadows on snow. Lucius touched the edges once, as usual, before bowing his head and reading the dark words that he had memorized by now but kept returning to as someone might prod at a loose tooth with his tongue.  
  
 _I sometimes wonder what I am doing here, locked in the Manor with a Dark Lord I never chose to follow, in the company of a husband I learned to despise years ago._  
  
Lucius swallowed and closed his eyes for long moments. The pages of the book bent beneath his clutching fingers, and he released his hold and once again ran a hand up the cover of the book, wishing now that the ward was still active to spark and give him some physical pain to counteract the mental one. He had read these words many times, and yet with each reading they made his throat dry and his stomach clench and twist within him.  
  
 _Why did you start despising me_? he thought, as he opened his eyes. There were several possible answers he’d discovered through his reading of the other books, but none in this diary.   
  
 _I know the answer, of course. Duty. It is the iron goddess I have followed all my life, from the first moment that my mother sat down with me and told me what it meant to bear the last name of Black. The clutch only grew firmer when Walburga’s sons turned out to be such disappointments, one of them wild and rebellious, the other weak. My sisters and I were the only generation left alive to bear children who would redeem the family. Our own name might be lost in marriage, but our blood could never be, and we would do that blood proud.  
  
The chains grew heaviest on me when my mother told me I would marry Lucius Malfoy, a boy I had looked at with indifference all throughout Hogwarts. He was handsome, yes, but looks never mattered to me. I told my mother that, and she took my hands, and looked earnestly into my face and told me that it was my duty, that she had been to a Seer and learned the Black blood would mingle best with the Malfoy. I was the only chance to bear a child who would be a worthy heir. Bellatrix would be childless, and Andromeda had already run away with the Mudblood. Even if she came to her senses and returned without having borne a child, her womb was defiled by the spilling of his seed inside her.  
  
I sat alone among the ironwood trees in my favorite garden and communed with the silence a long time, wondering if I was making the best decision. I could run away, as Andromeda had. I might take poison, as some maidens did in the old days when they would not defy the will of their families but could not marry the men chosen for them. That death would earn me honor at my funeral from Bellatrix, at least, although she would probably scorn me for not having the strength to live.  
  
More than that_, I  _would scorn myself for not having the strength to live. I rose from that garden and came away knowing the truth, that my life was devoted to duty and there was no room for love.  
  
When love grew, when I bore the son my mother and the Seer had foreseen and saw the Black blood mingled with the Malfoy, then I tied it in its proper place, under duty. My son must live not because I loved him but because he was an heir to two powerful families, and because my womb was so damaged with the difficult birth that he would have no siblings. And, too, he was beautiful from birth, magically powerful and pure-blooded. There are not so many children like that in our world that we can afford to be careless with them.  
  
And it is duty that drives me, now, towards the only possible end. I have listened carefully to the Dark Lord’s words. I know that he has not truly forgiven Draco for his failure to kill Dumbledore, and that Severus Snape’s quiet intercession for Draco’s life is not enough now that Snape spends most of his time on missions. However this war ends, it is likely that our Lord will kill my son the next time he summons him into his presence.  
  
That cannot happen. Duty forbids it. The heavy chain clasped around my soul rattles and drags me around to look towards the future, where live the children who will never be born if I do not save Draco. And, too, there is that love, that tendril of ivy winding around the ironwood tree, which tells me I will not be able to live with myself if I do not do all in my power to save him.  
  
I know my power. Not magic; the Dark Lord is much stronger than I am. Not family connections; Bellatrix has made it clear that she despises Draco and thinks our mother wrong in claiming he would be a fitting heir for both of the bloods he carries, and I cannot depend on Lucius. _  
  
“Why couldn’t you?” Lucius whispered to his dead wife. “What did I say, what did I do, that drove you away from me? You know how much I love Draco. You know that I would have cooperated in any plan to protect him.”  
  
 _Not the power of words; Snape is not often here, and I cannot bind him to another Unbreakable Vow. There is only one power that is still mine, one devotion I can lay on the stern goddess’s altar and hope she accepts._  
  
The diary ended there. It was the last entry Narcissa had ever made, though the rest of the pages waited, white and blue and shining, for ink and words that would never come. Lucius closed the diary and sat back, shutting his eyes.  
  
He could picture his wife as she must have looked when she laid the diary down on the desk in this library, her eyes fixed on the far wall, her hair loose about her, a shining glory. She would have risen to her feet slowly and deliberately. She would have laid the quill beside the dairy and stood a moment gazing at it before she cast the spell that sealed the cover shut and protected her words from the sight of anyone else.  
  
And then she had turned around and left the library for the last time.  
  
 _Narcissa, Narcissa, why did you do it_? Lucius thought, opening his eyes with tears on his cheeks.  _Yes, I know the answers: to protect Draco, to fulfill your duty, because you thought it was your last chance. But none of that should have overridden your common sense, and that common sense would have reminded you that your sister was_  dangerous.  
  
He came here so often because he thought it possible that he would gain some sense of his wife’s mind by sitting where she had sat, looking at what she had looked at—the dim wood-paneled walls of this library, blankness relieved only by the presence of a tapestry that depicted a winter forest—and tracing the words she had written. He needed more than those bare words. He needed to know the emotions that had driven her, the emotions that had turned her away from him and thought the ultimate dishonor was a good idea.   
  
So far, he had not discovered them.  
  
Lucius sighed and opened his eyes. He could at least make one promise to the shade of the wife who had despised him, whatever her reasons. She had died because she loved Draco, and it was just possible that her death had helped their son make it through the war. Lucius could protect Draco from the consequences of his own folly, and make sure the obsession with Potter didn’t damage him.  
  
“I promise, Narcissa,” he said aloud. “I promise that I’ll defend him. You’ll have no reason to complain of me as a father, whatever you might think of me as a husband.”  
  
A rustle to the side sent him spinning around, staring in hope, but the portrait frame on the wall was empty, save for a blue shred to the side that might have been a silken gown darting out of it—  
  
And might as easily have been Lucius’s imagination.


	11. Not Passion's Slave

Lucius watched Potter and Draco closely when they came back to the Manor, though neither knew he was there. Draco sat on a couch in a room that Narcissa had liked to use for the reception of guests whom she didn’t particularly want, but which Draco had always liked for the heavy wooden shelves on the walls and the glass windows that shifted back and forth in permanent enchantment, glowing with jewel-like light. Potter sat on a chair in front of him, leaning forwards with head bowed. They seemed to be arguing, but only rarely did their voices rise enough for Lucius to make out the words.  
  
At one point, Potter said, “But of course I think the imposter is doing what he’s doing with magic. There’s been no sign of anyone helping him—“  
  
“It doesn’t mean it can’t happen,” Draco said, and flipped his hair behind his shoulders with a look Lucius knew well. Once it had signaled that Draco was about to start bellowing for a toy or a sweet. Now, his tone only grew tighter. “You may have missed something in your investigations. An accomplice. A link to me. You certainly missed a Malfoy relative, if he can pass so easily through the wards.”  
  
“You don’t seem to believe there are any unknown Malfoy relatives—“  
  
“But maybe there are, and of course if they were unknown, then I wouldn’t know about them, either, no matter how well-educated I was in the history of my family—“  
  
Their voices sank again, and Potter leaned further forwards, eyes fixed on Draco as if he were the sun rising after a long, thick night. Lucius hissed under his breath. Potter, of all people, ought to be safe from Draco. He had vigilant friends who hated Draco’s family and no need to depend on the Malfoys’ wealth or fame when he had plenty of his own. But no, of course Potter had become attracted to Draco, or maybe even fallen in love with him.  
  
Lucius had seen that shining-star look in faces before, most recently in his own mirror when he thought of Narcissa, but before that whenever he glanced at Bellatrix daydreaming of her Lord. It could lead to nothing good when its subject was alive.  
  
 _In Bellatrix’s case, it led to—_  
  
Lucius shook his head, sternly forbidding himself to think about that, and then blinked as Potter stood up and strode out of the receiving room, leaving Draco to pout by himself. Maybe they’d had enough disagreement for one day, or maybe Potter needed to leave Draco to do some research for himself. Whichever it was, it represented a chance. Potter was making straight for the doorway where Lucius leaned.  
  
He took a step back, so it would seem as if he had naturally passed by and not as if he were waiting for Potter, and listened to the beat of his own heart for long moments.  
  
*  
  
Harry paused curiously when he noticed Lucius Malfoy waiting in the doorway that led to the staircase. He really had no reason to distrust Draco’s father, he supposed, but on the other hand, he doubted that Lucius had a reason to like him, either. He let one hand hover above his wand and inclined his head, courteously enough, he hoped.  
  
“Hello, sir,” he said. “Can I do something for you?”  
  
“Why are you leaving my son alone?” Lucius glided a step forwards, and Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if his own hand was resting on his wand, too. “I thought you were supposed to protect him at all times whilst this attacker moves about.”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry. “But he’d had enough of my company for today, and he wanted to do some research in a family library that he apparently can’t share with me.” A glance over his shoulder revealed that Malfoy had already left.  
  
“And you are willing to risk his life?”  
  
Harry regarded Lucius thoughtfully. “How secure do you think the wards on the Manor are, Mr. Malfoy? Your son seems to trust them for the present. Now that you know how our enemy entered, surely you can prevent it from happening a second time?”  
  
“That is the problem,” said Lucius, speaking roughly, as if he had made a belated decision to trust Harry. “We  _don’t_  know how he entered. Severus says that his inspection of the wards reveals that it is as if Draco himself entered. The wards welcomed him like a member of the family they had temporarily forgotten.”  
  
“Well, the possibility of Malfoy blood—“  
  
“They parted too smoothly for him to be a distant relative.” Lucius set his mouth in a grim line. It didn’t improve his face, which in turn showed traces of the insanity Draco had hinted at, Harry thought. He looked as if he had spent long nights squinting at candles and into mirrors and reading books of Dark Arts. “Besides, I have done my own research. We have no such distant relative.”  
  
“There’s always the chance that someone missed something.”  
  
Lucius laughed. “This is the kind of mistake that my ancestors were extremely unlikely to make.”  
  
Knowing the Malfoys’ obsession with pure blood, Harry could see that. But he had to hold out hope that he could solve the crime. “A distant relative remains our best guess,” he said. “Unless you think the man I’ve been around for the last day isn’t your son.” That would at least explain the oddities of Draco’s behavior in the Imperatrix.  
  
 _And some other things_ , said Hermione’s voice in her head. Harry hoped he concealed his leap of startlement by shifting his weight. She had gone away for a time to devote herself to her own studies, and he had accepted that he wouldn’t hear her voice anymore today.  
  
“I do not think that,” said Lucius. “But I would tell you to be careful of him nevertheless.”  
  
Harry had to roll his eyes. “I think he’s hardly going to harm me, Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
“You have no idea what sort of conversation he has haunted me with over the past few years.” Lucius leaned forwards and spoke urgently. “He turned as dark as thunder every time your name came up, or muttered and swore about how he would defeat you someday. He started his business in the first place because he knew it was something you’d never been connected with. That was why he refused to become a curse-breaker or a Quidditch star, because he believed that others would always mentally compare him to you.”  
  
Harry felt a squeezing flutter in his chest, but it was sympathy, and not hope. That life was not a kind he would have wished on anyone. He might have mourned because he couldn’t have Draco, but he had also kept abreast of politics, arrested criminals, contributed to carefully selected charitable organizations, and found—and lost—lovers. Besides, if Draco had a ruling passion, then surely it was the power he obtained from the building of his houses, and his pride in how graceful and beautiful they were. Harry, if he even counted on that scale of Draco’s achievements, was surely a small dot.  
  
“You don’t believe me.” Lucius’s voice broke into his musing. Harry looked up to see him shaking his head in wonder. “Has Draco got to you that quickly? Has he convinced you that everything I say must be false?”  
  
“I’ve been around him the past day,” Harry said. “He’s done some strange things, yes, but he’s in danger of losing his life and he has to deal with someone he hated for years. Strangeness is to be expected and excused.”  
  
“You trust his actions more than my words.” Lucius again shook his head. “Though Draco is very good at lying with his body. I cannot tell you how many, both men and women, have thought he was in love with them.”  
  
 _That’s not what I want_ , Harry thought instantly,  _not what I really want_.  
  
 _I thought it was_. Hermione sounded confused.  
  
 _I want Draco to be happy, and free. I want to stop him from being hurt. If I could play a part in the latter, that’s enough for me.  
  
Oh_, Harry.  
  
But Hermione, even if she was privy to her thoughts, wasn’t privy to Harry’s deepest and fondest wishes. He hadn’t shared them with anyone but Ginny. Harry didn’t think he could keep himself from falling in love if Draco offered his heart, but Harry doubted that would ever happen—not to him. Sleeping together would have to be enough.  
  
 _And now you’re willing to compromise your morals and your wish for a deeper connection with him just for sex_. Hermione sounded caught between amusement and despair.  _Harry, have you listened to your own thoughts lately?_  
  
“I will attempt to bring you proof,” Lucius was saying, “proof that his emotions for you run deep and are not always positive. I would wish you to be more alert, but it does not sound as if that will happen.” He turned and walked away down the corridor with a dignity that Harry had to admire, in a broken man.  
  
Harry climbed the staircase and lay down on his conjured bed in Draco’s room, closing his eyes. Thoughts darted and threaded through his mind: Draco’s hair shining in his office, Faustine’s words in the Imperatrix, Hermione’s worries, the way Ron had teased and cajoled and shouted at him that morning.  
  
He tried to quell his worries about Draco and the feeling that he might be attacked whilst Harry wasn’t with him. The times Harry  _had_  been with him, he had been able to hold the imposter off, but not to stop him Apparating away. And he had to rest at some point; the wounds he’d taken earlier and two battles in twenty-four hours had exhausted him.  
  
Besides, Draco had said that the only people who could enter the library he was going to were him and Lucius. He  _ought_  to be safe.  
  
 _I’ll look into the mystery of how someone could appear to be Malfoy himself_ , Hermione said suddenly.  _I hope it might help. And get you away from Malfoy more quickly._  
  
Harry grunted his thanks, and then drifted into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed of flapping parchments, for some reason, each covered with secrets that he had to read before they disappeared—but Draco, standing on the other side of the room and covered with a cloak of braided red ribbons, kept tearing them to shreds before Harry could capture them. His face was utterly emotionless.  
  
*  
  
 _The philosophy of an unerring Time was widely accepted among wizarding experts in the sixteenth century. This was the view that any mistake with a Time-Turner or a traveling spell was not fatal, because Time would simply absorb the mortal who had tried to change it and resume its natural course. But others have argued that we could not be sure what the “natural course” of Time was, and we might believe that it was exactly as it had always been simply because our memories altered with changing Time…_  
  
Draco sighed and leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head and wringing his shoulders from one side to the other. The author he’d been concentrating on for the past hour, Parcelsus Greenblatt, wasn’t the most exciting writer in the world, and so far he seemed more interesting in recounting various theories of time travel than asking what would happen if a mistake was made.  
  
But Draco still thought it most likely he would find an answer here. After all, how could the imposter be anything but himself from an alternate time-stream? That would explain why he looked so much like Draco but had a few details wrong with him. Of course the Draco of that other century or other time would have developed differently. But his blood and his bone would still be Malfoy, and the house would recognize him. Even the wards on Draco’s office probably would.  
  
He bent over the book again, skimming the long paragraphs until he finally reached one where it seemed that Greenblatt was going to talk about consequences.  
  
 _The theory of Time I most favor argues that we each have a home, a place in the braided streams of time and space that we might call our own. We exist in many forms, and every major decision we make in our lives produces another stream, with a slightly altered version of ourselves existing in that world. Of course, the other versions of ourselves can die, and it would then be safe to visit that time-stream, because you would not be disturbing or replacing anyone. But I think the place that you were born in would still call out to you.  
  
But what might happen if one came into a time-stream where a version of oneself still existed—where that person was at home and you were not? Then, I believe, the case would be very much altered. The other version would be the “real” version of yourself there, and you the ghost, the shadow. When one sees one’s doppelganger, runs the ancient legend, one is about to experience disaster or an evil fate. I believe many of those evil fates were the result of the time-stream reasserting itself, championing the rights of the version born in it to exist there and rejecting the false one.  
  
What might happen to the intruder? Several things. He could be sent violently back to his own time. He might die in an accident—or his other self might die in an accident, because though Time and the world would champion the one born there, claim him as their natural child, that is not to say that he would not be destroyed in the convulsions of the moment as it tried to come right again. And of course the intruder might kill the version of himself who is truly at home there. Such tales are rife among the children of the wizarding world, in part because of the belief that all such intruders are fleeing the destruction of their worlds and time-streams—this is not true—and in part because of the daydream that we could escape into a better life for ourselves, complete with family and friends and all our best memories, if we only knew how. In the case of such a murder, I believe the alternate version of the self could settle comfortably into the old one’s place, as he could if he traveled to a world where the version of himself had already died._  
  
Draco nodded slowly. This theory was a bit sketchy when applied to his imposter, perhaps, but it accurately explained everything: the minute differences from Draco, the way he’d grown increasingly desperate and tried to kill Draco directly—he must be afraid of Time’s vengeance catching him if he didn’t kill Draco soon—and even the minor crimes. He’d been trying to embarrass Draco enough to make him leave the country or withdraw from society, and then he would have had a much easier time claiming Draco’s place.  
  
 _What to do about it?_  
  
Draco gave a small smile and began to flip pages towards the back of the book, where Greenblatt had listed a section called “Banishing Spells.” Those might help in exiling the imposter back to his own time. Draco had no particular wish to kill the bastard, when there was an entire Auror Department waiting for the chance to accuse him of murder, and he couldn’t depend on Time to choose his side instead of the other’s.   
  
 _Of course, the best that could happen might be Potter killing him, and then my “falling” into bed with him, overcome with “gratitude.” He is_  such  _a Gryffindor that he might easily buy that._  
  
But first things first, Draco told himself, and began to read the section on Banishing Spells, which indeed seemed to be what he had thought it was, though it would take a while to choose the best one.  
  
*  
  
Harry hesitated outside the blank door, staring at it. It was superficially different from the similar door he had once confronted in the dungeons at Hogwarts: it was made of shining golden-colored marble, a single flat sheet of it, and not ancient wood, and the corridors around it were also high and bright, not dripping damp stone. But nevertheless Harry thought he could feel cold and poison breathing out around it. If he sniffed hard enough, surely he would catch a hint of hemlock fumes.  
  
He did not  _want_  to enter Snape’s private potions lab, he thought, even as he raised his hand and knocked. But he really didn’t have much choice.   
  
Over the past few days, Draco had done continuous research, Lucius had continued to speak blunt warnings that Harry couldn’t believe, Hermione had given him a chattering stream of ideas about time travel and alternate worlds but nothing concrete, and Harry had driven himself slowly mad watching for further attacks that didn’t come. Kingsley had suggested, when Harry owled him, that three failed attacks in one day might have been enough for their criminal. He was withdrawn now, plotting a strategy that he thought would win him everything when he finally attacked.  
  
That was what Harry was  _worried_  about, of course, because if he plotted well enough, he might really manage to kill Draco next time. But Kingsley hadn’t responded to the latest owl in which he suggested that, and Harry wanted to do something with his fear.  
  
That left Snape, whom he hadn’t seen in several days, as the only source of information that Harry didn’t know for certain was uncommunicative right now.  
  
No one had responded to his knock. Harry hissed under his breath and pounded on the door hard enough to rattle the marble in its frame.  
  
The fourth or fifth time his fist descended, the door grew soft beneath it. Harry yelped in surprise as his hand sank into cloud, and then he was pulled violently after it. He tried to muster enough wandless magic to defend himself, but strips of choking mist wrapped around his mouth and crept down his throat, and he lost the impulse in the terrifying struggle to breathe.  
  
Then all his blood rushed to his head as he was suspended upside-down, the sudden reversal of gravity making him quite ill. Harry shut his eyes and hissed again under the forming pressure of a headache, hearing no sound behind the beat of his heart for long moments.  
  
Then slow, menacing boots stalked towards him. Harry opened his eyes and found himself staring at a pair of black-clothed legs.  
  
“As usual, Potter, you have got yourself into a predicament that is no one’s fault but your own,” said Snape’s bored drawl. “You should have suspected that the door of a Potions master would be warded.”  
  
“Could you let me go, sir?” Harry asked, and he thought his voice was polite. “I need to ask you some questions about the potions you’re brewing because of the case.”  
  
Snape waved his wand and said a single word, and the spiderweb that had apparently held Harry to the door snapped and let him drop. He banged his head so hard on the floor that blackness swam in and tried to possess his vision. Harry gritted his teeth and rolled over, attempting to get his arms under him and  _think_  past the stunning pain.  
  
“You should have known better than to knock on my door like a maniac with that in mind, as well,” said Snape. He had already turned back to his potions table, as Harry saw when he glanced up at him. He was moving a hand in what Harry reckoned were stirring motions, though his body blocked them and Harry couldn’t be sure. “A civilized confrontation in the corridors would have been preferable.”  
  
“How could I do that, when you never leave this bloody place?” Harry was reasonably certain he didn’t have a concussion; he’d experienced several during his work as an Auror and knew what they felt like. That didn’t mean the crack on the skull didn’t bloody hurt. He braced himself on the wall with one hand and stumbled slowly back to his bruised and aching feet. “Anyone would think you’re avoiding me.”  
  
Snape laughed, a bark sharp enough to make Harry wince away from it. Then he turned around and put his back to the table he’d been working at, still concealing the cauldron from Harry’s view. His eyes shone so hotly that Harry had to fight an impulse to retreat. The only time he’d seen Snape this angry was during his third year at Hogwarts, when Snape found out that Sirius had been spared the Kiss.  
  
 _And he lived through the war, whilst Sirius didn’t_. Harry felt a poisoned clench of anger around his heart, which enabled him to meet Snape’s gaze without looking away, though the temptation was great. Looking at Snape was like having needles driven into his eyes.  
  
“I will say this once, and once only,” Snape whispered. “I do not know for certain why the attacker who threatens Draco’s life and reputation was able to get past the Malfoy bloodline wards. I have created potions that will alert Lucius and myself if he tries again, despite his apparent indistinguishableness from Draco. They took some time and work to develop, which is the reason I have ‘avoided’ you for the past few days, Mr. Potter.  
  
“I know why you are here. You carry a bevy of feelings for Draco that would destroy his life were you allowed to express them. That must never happen. And you tempt Draco against his will into a self-immolation that he, perhaps, could not survive.” Snape sneered at him. “Of course, he is wiser than to become involved with you, but the danger is real. You destroy everything you truly care for, Potter, and you always have.”  
  
“Ron and Hermione—“ Harry began, even as his brain screamed at him that it was stupid to argue with Snape, given his intractable prejudice against Harry.  
  
“Name your friends, of course,” said Snape, with a flick of his fingers. “Their doom is delayed, but real.” He leaned forwards, and Harry flinched; now the needles were drilling into the back of his skull. “You will destroy him if you stay here. More than the imposter can do, you will do. You have destroyed Lucius’s peace and my own already. You might tempt Draco, little by little, and hint at what you can share together, and bind him, and drag him, and make him think foolish, unwise things. He has always  _noticed_  you, even when he should not have. You will destroy a bright and beautiful thing, and you will not even notice that you are doing so, because what, to you, is one more trampled butterfly?”  
  
Snape’s spittle was hitting Harry’s face. Harry held on to his temper. He thought of Snape’s strange, self-contradictory ramblings—Draco could not fall to him, but would—and thought he knew what this was about.  
  
“You’re afraid that I’ll do to him what you think James did to my mum?” he asked quietly.  
  
The force of Snape’s slap carried him off his feet and made him reel back into the door, blind with pain. He moved his tongue along his lip, where a tooth had cut it, and spat blood.  
  
Snape hissed a single word of Latin, and Harry stood in the corridor again, staring at the solidly closed door.  
  
Harry shook his head, shut his eyes, and limped away in search of a book of healing incantations. He didn’t know why he still tried. Snape was never going to change his opinion of Harry, that was obvious.  
  
 _As you thought Draco would never change his opinion of you?_  
  
Harry sighed. He knew why he tried. Even if Snape never changed, even if Draco was lying, Harry was still himself, and he would not have felt right unless he tried. 


	12. Out Of This Nettle, We Pluck This Flower

Harry stretched his muscles and leaned over backwards to ease a kink at the base of his spine. The conjured bed in Draco’s room was comfortable enough, but sitting in a chair in front of Kingsley’s desk whilst he was lectured on the latest business of the Auror Department—Kingsley having decided that Harry could do paperwork on other cases even if he couldn’t move far from Draco’s side—always made him uncomfortable.  
  
He had left the Manor reluctantly, carrying a silver ring with a simple enchantment that would make it heat up if Draco’s life was in danger. Kingsley had even agreed to lower the wards around his office so that Harry could Apparate back to the Manor immediately instead of rushing down to the Atrium and Flooing. Harry had looked at the ring many times during the meeting with Kingsley, admiring the way that the silver looked beside the copper of the one that let him communicate with Hermione.  
  
But nothing had happened, and Harry was beginning to think that perhaps the imposter had given up and left the country when he realized that nothing he did would let him snatch Draco’s life away. That was perfectly fine with  _him_. He could remain a few days longer in Draco’s company before Draco, who was still involved in his research, would grow suspicious and begin to think he was lingering for unprofessional reasons.  
  
 _And who knows_? Harry thought, as he walked slowly across the moonlit lawn towards the Manor.  _Maybe he will decide that we should pursue the desire that sprang up between us in his office and—go to bed together._  
  
The words had too pressing a weight in Harry’s mind; he could almost taste the breath that he would use to form them, and he  _could_  feel anticipation gathering around his heart, in his lungs, at the base of his brain. He had told Hermione he would be content if he could have sex with Draco, fulfilling the physical desire that plagued him.  
  
He had been lying, though at the time he hadn’t known that.  
  
His fascination with Draco had deepened and cooled over the past few days, turning from fleeting fiery passion into a rooted, growing flower. He watched the way Draco bent over a sheet of parchment on which he was drawing the plans for the Keller house and he could nearly glimpse the thoughts that flew beyond those bright eyes. He knew the way Draco looked now when he was planning an improvement to the design that he hoped would particularly surprise or delight his client.   
  
He understood that Draco’s way of looking demurely away from the house-elves when they carried dinner in from the kitchens concealed suppressed laughter. It seemed that Draco had never got over finding house-elves slightly ridiculous, a quirk which made Harry like him more.  
  
He understood now that Draco liked to go to bed so early because he preferred to lie awake in bed an hour or so before he had to face the day. Hermione would no doubt say it was due to laziness, but Harry had listened to Draco’s relaxed breathing in the morning—the sunlight coming through the windows, the air between them thick and still and silent—and he thought he understood. Draco wanted time to collect his thoughts and calm the whirling of his brain. Most people did that before they fell asleep, or over a glass of Firewhisky or butterbeer in the evenings, but Draco seemed to collapse straight into slumber from a high. No wonder he needed some time in quiet before he was ready to act again in the mornings.  
  
And Draco drank his tea in the morning with a gentle, absorbed expression, as if his thoughts had left behind beautiful patterns on the back of his eyelids that he needed to memorize before they disappeared.   
  
No, Harry wanted more than the bare minimum of sex and desire from Draco.  
  
 _And maybe it would be better to have nothing at all than too little._  
  
Harry paused and tilted his head back to stare at Malfoy Manor. He had Apparated to such a distance from it so that he might have some solitude of his own to calm his whirling brain, but also because he had wanted to see what it looked like in moonlight. Maybe Draco had taken some of his inspiration for his other houses from it, and so the glimpse of the house like this would let him understand Draco better.  
  
Harry caught his breath when he saw it now, the stones glinting with separate small sparks of light, the roof and walls a continuous silver stream of radiance even though they were made of easily discerned separate pieces. Yes, Draco had taken some of his ideas from this place. But even those ideas had been bent and reformed and reshaped into new pieces, so that the other houses he made were not imitations of Malfoy Manor anymore than a child is an imitation of its parents.  
  
Someone moved in the moonlight near him. Harry turned around casually and saw Draco standing at a short distance, watching him with an intense gaze and a faint half-smile on his face. He looked once at the Manor, and then back at Harry. The faint smile widened.  
  
“You wanted to see where I get my inspiration from?” he asked. His voice was soft, as if he thought speaking loudly would disturb the wrong ghosts in the moonlight.  
  
Harry nodded. “It’s—wonderful,” he said, and left it at that, because he couldn’t think of a better word to describe it.  
  
Draco faced the Manor again, and Harry made out a stark expression of naked yearning on his face. It surprised him. He hadn’t seen Draco so open with his emotions since they’d come to the Manor. Even the gentle expressions in the morning that now told Harry so much weren’t understandable in the same way that a smile from Hermione or a clasp on the shoulder from Ron would have been. Harry knew them because he had learned to speak Draco’s language. But this looks liked emotional English.  
  
“I wonder sometimes what it would be like,” Draco whispered, “to have that gift of creation in my hands. To make something like—that.”  
  
Harry felt absurdly honored. Draco could only mean that he considered Malfoy Manor better than any house he’d built. The admission couldn’t have been an easy one to make, and that he was allowing Harry to see it…  
  
“I can only know the faintest shadow of it.” Draco’s voice had acquired a sharp edge that made Harry wonder if he was scolding himself, because that was usually the way he sounded when speaking to idiots. “Who would have thought it was so hard to learn? As much time as I spend with books and walking on prospects and watching the way that people react to other homes, there’s a substance to it that escapes me.”  
  
“I’m sure you’ll build a house as good as this one someday,” Harry murmured. He fought the urge to step forwards and lay a hand on Draco’s elbow. In the past week, he and Draco hadn’t touched at all. Harry was afraid it would send mixed messages, and Draco seemed too occupied with his quest to find a real answer to the mystery of the impostor to notice.  
  
Draco bowed his head and sighed. “I don’t think so,” he said.  
  
“Why not?” Harry did move closer this time. The moon really was brilliant, perhaps aided by an enchantment the Malfoys had added to the outside of the Manor; Harry hadn’t had occasion to be in this part of the grounds before and wouldn’t know. “I’ve seen you work. You have at least as much talent as the builders of this house did. Not the same kind, perhaps, but the degree isn’t different.”  
  
Draco stiffened for a moment, as if Harry’s long speech had reminded him that someone else besides him was here to witness his disgrace. Then he gave a weary little laugh and shook his head. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” he said. “You know all of it already.”  
  
“No,” Harry whispered. “I might have suspected it, but I didn’t know it.”  
  
“And hearing it from my mouth makes it so much more real to you?” Draco stepped towards him, head lifted and eyes wide. Harry thought he looked as if he were moving in a dream. He wondered if he shouldn’t wake him up.  
  
But Draco’s hand fell, weed-light, on his arm, and then he leaned forwards, and Harry decided that he didn’t care how dream-like Draco felt right now. Maybe he’d found the answer he needed. Maybe he thought as Harry did, that nothing else was likely to happen now and Harry would be removed from the case any minute. Either way, Harry wanted this to happen too much to stop it. He curved his arm around Draco’s waist and pulled him close, then closer still, full of warmth and sudden harsh breathing and quickening heart—  
  
And without the familiar vibration of the hawthorn wand.  
  
Harry held Draco still for a moment, though Draco made a little frustrated sound under his breath and strained towards his lips. Harry felt his thoughts tumbling and reorienting, and he swallowed.   
  
“What’s wrong?” Draco asked, opening his eyes and staring into Harry’s. “You can’t have changed your mind in the last week, can you?” A jeering, incredulous tone entered his voice, which suited the Draco Harry was familiar with much better. “You can’t have decided that you didn’t want me?”  
  
“I want you,” Harry said, and thought for a moment that Draco might have left his wand in his room. He could consider the family grounds safe enough to walk without it—  
  
 _But no, he wouldn’t. Not after the imposter bypassed the wards so easily. He might have been incautious at times, but he’s not stupid._  
  
Harry debated asking if Draco had the wand with him, and then discarded the notion. His Auror instincts had forbidden him from revealing that he could hear the wand even to Draco so far, and he certainly couldn’t chance revealing it and forfeiting his advantage in front of a man who might not be Draco.  
  
“Then what’s the problem?” Draco made another straining motion, intent on getting to Harry’s mouth. Lines crimped around the edges of his lips, white lines of frustration that Harry had seen when Draco stared at a plan moments before crumpling it violently up and flinging it into the bin.   
  
He almost kissed him then. The lines were Draco, the voice was Draco, the air was Draco; this was  _Draco_  in his arms.  
  
But there was the wand that Draco should have carried and Harry should have felt but didn’t. And there was the confession to him in the open air. Harry wondered now if the “gift” that Draco had spoken of not having wasn’t the gift to build a house like Malfoy Manor, but instead the talent for architecture at all. The imposter could feign much, but Harry doubted he could feign an instinct like the one Draco had for houses.  
  
“Come  _on_.” Draco leaned nearer still, and there was sweet desperation in his voice and his fingers squeezed Harry’s arms and his teeth snapped a few inches from Harry’s throat.  
  
“I want Draco Malfoy,” Harry told him, going with an instinct he couldn’t have named aloud, purely to see what would happen. “You’re not him.”  
  
Draco’s head appeared almost to split, so wide did his mouth open in a snarl. He jerked back from Harry, flying, and he screamed wordlessly, and this time Harry could hear the difference in his voice. He’d probably spent those days he was in hiding perfecting his imitation of Draco’s intonations and manner, but he still wasn’t Draco.  
  
Harry went for his wand.  
  
Before he could, blinding pain ripped down his side. He screamed. He could  _hear_  the skin parting, being slickly slit open, popping and ripping. He dropped to one knee, still trying to lift his wand and strike back, but the pain of the wound—which felt as if it ran from his collarbone to his waist—was too great.  
  
He collapsed. The imposter stepped towards him, trembling and blazing and holding his wand as if he intended to use it like a knife to open Harry’s throat.  
  
“You don’t know who I am,” he said. “ _No one_  does, and no one shall, until the day when everyone in the world knows.”  
  
Harry, panting, his hand soaked with blood where he’d placed it over the wound without even realizing he was doing so, told himself he would remember this riddle, and that he really should untangle it. But he couldn’t, not when cold was pouring into him where the blood had flowed out and a low, dull, persistent ache had settled into the middle of his body. He had never realized he could feel so empty, he thought absently. Well, there was that time Alecto Carrow had cast the Scooping Curse and torn half his guts out of him before he blinked, but then—  
  
“What the  _fuck_  is going on here?”  
  
*  
  
Lucius cursed as the air in front of him turned thick and red with a haze like blood or anger, and as his hands began tingling fiercely. He sprang to his feet, seized his wand, and stormed towards the entrance of the house.  
  
He met Severus on the stairs, and Severus nodded to him. “Intruder,” he said, and then opened the front doors and sailed out onto the lawn without pausing to wait for Lucius. Occasionally, Lucius thought as he ran after him, he was reminded that Severus had qualities he used to admire. Being as no-nonsense as a Dark Lord could desire was one of them.   
  
The potions to tell them of a breach in the wards had worked better than expected, if they had caught the intruder in the open, Lucius thought as he raced behind Severus, who could move like a sprinter even in his long black robes. Severus had been sure they would alert them the moment the imposter appeared within the physical walls of the house, but the gardens and lawns of the Manor were wide, and protecting them completely probably impossible, given the recent development of Severus’s potions.  
  
And then he saw the blaze of moonlight on fair hair that made Lucius want to call out for his son. He shook his head. No, here there would be only the intruder and not Draco. Draco was still in bed for the evening, as far as Lucius knew, having retired early the way he usually did on nights when an architectural problem was bothering him.  
  
“What the  _fuck_  is going on here?”  
  
That was Severus. Lucius nearly lost a moment staring at him in astonishment, but the attacker seemed to react with anger only. He snarled and launched a curse at Lucius, a burning green one shaped like an arrow that Lucius hadn’t seen since the nastiest days of the Dark Lord’s occupation of Malfoy Manor.   
  
He cast the proper countercurse to deflect it, a glittering yellow net that swept up the arrow and tore it to shreds with a dozen clamping, clapping mouths. Then he cast a spell of his own devising that would cause painful bites to spring out all over his opponent’s body. He suspected it would be fairly quickly matched, but he could use even a momentary diversion to appease his curiosity about what Severus was doing.  
  
Severus had fallen to his knees and was moving his wand in rapid passes, chanting urgently. Lucius saw the spread of blood in front of him then, and felt sick, wondering if the attacker had managed to lure or smuggle Draco out of bed, before he saw that the wound was on the body of one Harry Potter.  
  
 _You had better be saving him, Severus, and not ensuring the murderer was successful_ , Lucius told his old friend silently.  _If the Boy-Who-Lived dies on Malfoy property, I’ll be in Azkaban faster than I can blink._  
  
The attacker recovered then and roared back at him in a whirlwind of magic and screaming, and Lucius was forced to pay attention to him instead. Lucius’s respect increased as the moments passed and none of his spells could convince the other man to back off. This was a wizard who had  _studied_ , and who had probably managed to achieve some unique effects in his time. The idea that he had somehow contravened the bloodline wards on Malfoy Manor was less puzzling now.  
  
Given that, Lucius was all the  _more_  puzzled that he should have chosen to waste his time on a series of petty crimes designed to discredit Draco.   
  
Finally, one of Lucius’s other self-made spells, which tore the kneecaps apart, got through, and the attacker snarled again—it made his face look as if it would split in half when he did that—and Apparated. Lucius stood with his head bowed and his arms swinging for long moments before he sighed and rose to make his way towards Potter and Severus.  
  
“Nice of you to help me,” Severus snapped as Lucius crouched down next to Potter.  
  
“I figured that, by now, his life was either saved or spent,” Lucius explained simply, and then looked at Potter. His face was so pale that Lucius would have suspected him of vampirism if he didn’t know the cause. Potter’s lightning bolt scar and the dark lashes of his shut eyes lay like wounds against that papery skin. Above the long rip in his side—which made the edges of his skin and cloth both flutter like ragged paper—hovered a half-dome of purple light. Lucius turned and stared at Severus. That was another spell he hadn’t seen since the war, and when he had last seen it, it was enclosing blonde hair and legitimately pale skin.  
  
The silence asked his question for him. Severus hated Potter. And yet he’d done this, using a powerful healing spell that always exhausted him, to save him.  
  
Severus only glared at Potter through a dangling mop of hair and refused to answer Lucius with either word or gesture.  
  
Lucius sighed and said, “Apparently the imposter attacked Potter. Can you tell with what spell?”  
  
“I can,” said Severus coolly. “And since I have already healed him, I do not think the attack matters so much as knowing how the attacker managed to get past the wards in the first place—“  
  
“I thought we had agreed that we couldn’t know that yet—“  
  
“Potter managed to communicate to me,” Severus said, his lip curling. Perhaps flecks of spit from Potter’s tongue had touched his robe when it happened, Lucius thought in faint amusement. “Whilst I was—casting on him. He said that he had been talking with this pretender for at least five minutes before the attack. And the attack was what alerted us.” He swung his head to look at Lucius, and Lucius stifled the impulse to tell him to push that ridiculous mane of greasy hair out of the way. He could have done it at one point, when he was friends with Severus, but that friendship had died with Narcissa. “I specifically constructed the potions to warn us of any intrusion, not only a hostile one, so he cannot have triggered their warning merely by the use of hostile magic.  _What is the difference, Lucius_? What about the attack was so different that it brought us out here?”  
  
“Potter didn’t say anything else?” Lucius asked, holding back his private wonder that Potter had managed to say anything at all with a wound so fierce. Of course, Severus had always despised Potter, and so he wouldn’t have been particularly gentle with his healing. It was more than likely that Potter had awakened when he felt the harsh magic on his injury and gasped out the words that he thought might make Severus back away.  
  
“No.” Severus sighed and rose to his feet, levitating Potter’s body along with him. Lucius watched him covertly as they made their way back to the Manor. Potter could have jolted and jounced along; that was common enough with even the most skilled levitation. But perhaps Severus didn’t want to have to do all the work of his healing over again if Potter’s wound tore open, because  _this_  levitation was simple and placid. “And I fear that examining the broken wards will not tell us anything, either, if he managed to slip through the net without alerting us.”  
  
Lucius firmed his mouth into a thin line. The imposter’s attack on Potter, if Draco was his real target, confused him, but perhaps he sought to eliminate the most formidable defense Draco possessed, since he had shown the wards were nothing to him. Either way, Lucius thought it advisable to protect Potter.  
  
And maybe he would be more persuadable in a sickbed than he was stubborn and healthy.  
  
*  
  
Harry remembered little of the time immediately after he was wounded. He  _did_  remember gasping out the truth to Snape, so that someone besides him would know that the imposter wasn’t an immediate arrival. Someone had to protect Draco.  
  
He remembered Snape’s answer, too, snapped and hissed at him just before unconsciousness claimed him.  
  
 _“You are a protector, not a hero.”_  
  
He couldn’t remember it without a feeling of confusion, especially when he woke and found that Snape had done a first-rate job of healing him, but still the memory sat in his mind and refused to be moved.  
  
*  
  
Draco looked down at Potter, and then away. But the sound of the other man’s troubled breathing pursued him even so, as did the realization of how easily silence could have claimed and ended that breathing.  
  
And where would Draco have been? Powerless, inside the house, considering different variations of spells to banish the intruder back to his own time, not realizing that death had come and gone on the Manor grounds.  
  
He claimed he was obsessed with Potter, and yet he didn’t even know for certain when he was being wounded.  
  
Draco’s hands clenched into fists on his knees. He had come close to forgetting his desire to destroy Potter in the last few days, because the new problem of banishment had occupied his attention, along with the wish to build the Keller house correctly. He had assumed without thinking that Potter’s own fascination would keep him within reach, and when Draco wanted to reach out and wrap his hand more firmly around his soul, Potter would be there.  
  
Now he had received proof that might not be so. Lucius had told him, with a raised eyebrow at the demanding tone of Draco’s question, that Potter had gone to the Ministry for an Auror briefing.   
  
Potter felt able to venture away from him, under the conviction that the danger was not so great after all. How long would it be before his superiors assumed the same thing and yanked him off the case? And then all of Draco’s delicate, clever machinations might smash like the instruments in Dumbledore’s office that Potter had destroyed at the end of his fifth year, and Potter would be beyond his reach again, surrounded with people who would struggle to diminish his obsession with Draco.  
  
No. He could not allow that to happen. Regardless of the pace at which the imposter acted, he was not Draco’s true enemy. The only person who had ever challenged him for possession of his freedom lay in the bed in front of him.  
  
Death would have been kinder for him. Death would have been an  _escape_  from Draco’s vengeance. It was not surprising Potter should prefer it, but Draco could not allow him to flee into it.  
  
And at that moment, his lips contorted as the vengeance was chosen and sealed in his heart with a snap like a steel wire taking a hare’s neck.  
  
 _Nothing like the shock of the familiar to damage you_ , he thought, and leaned back in his chair to wait for Potter to wake up. He knew that his eyes on the other man’s face were bright with rage.


	13. Love Is a Familiar

Harry sighed as he stared at the tray of food on his lap. He had tried to negotiate with the Malfoy house-elves for some food stronger than porridge and toast—he would have killed for a good slice of bacon at the moment—but they refused to take the hint, and simply brought him new plates of the same food. At this point, he was hungry enough to eat it. He picked up his spoon, careful of the pulling motion that inflicted on the muscles in his side, and began to eat.  
  
It wasn’t as bad as Harry had feared it would be; he didn’t think he’d eaten a bad meal since coming to the Manor, and the porridge had a sprinkling of some sweet taste he hadn’t encountered before on the top. But it still wasn’t as good as bacon would have been, Harry thought, and imagined sucking grease through the circle of his pursed lips as he swallowed.  
  
 _You do have other things to think about than the food_ , Hermione’s voice said in his head. She had sounded considerably subdued ever since Harry woke up.  
  
 _I know, but I don’t want to think about them right now_. The image of Draco’s face transforming into a monster’s flashed in his mind, and Harry shook his head and buried it again. The shake of his head was a little too vigorous, and he winced as his wound opened enough to let a dribble of his blood pour out and soak the covers. He looked in several directions for the wand he could use to clean it up, but it escaped his eye. He made a disgusted sound under his breath.  _How do they expect me to take care of myself without a wand?_  
  
“Harry. I didn’t know you were hurt. You should have let someone know immediately that you were still in pain!”  
  
Suddenly Draco was there, all tender hands and soothing voice and wandering wand that stopped the flow of blood and grew a new layer of skin over the wound in an instant. Harry stared at him. He hadn’t even heard the door open.  
  
 _You were rather distracted by the pain_. Hermione’s voice in his head was snappish, but Harry knew that sort of snappishness she used to conceal worry, and she was using it now.  _Oh, Harry, why aren’t you in St. Mungo’s?  
  
I doubt the Malfoys trust the staff well enough to go there when they don’t have to_, Harry said.  _I was the one who took Draco there_. “Thank you,” he said aloud. “And I just now started hurting. You have miraculous timing.”  
  
Draco gave him a faint, nervous smile that for a moment made Harry think he was the imposter, but no, the wand that had healed him gave off the comforting vibrations of the familiar hawthorn one. “I was waiting,” he said. “I had wards on this room to tell me when you woke. But—I didn’t know if you would want to see me, after last night.” He looked away, as though to conceal what he felt, and seemed unaware that the hand that had wandered into his hair and was wrenching at the tangles gave it away perfectly well. “What must you think of my family’s hospitality or sense, that we let an intruder through the wards?”  
  
Harry was glad his astonishment prevented laughter. Draco would have taken laughter  _entirely_  the wrong way. And now that Harry was finally seeing some sign of what he had most craved from Draco, he didn’t want to do anything to disrupt it.  
  
“I know it happened once before,” Harry said, when he could speak. “And I chose to stay here anyway. And I’m glad I was the one who was attacked, instead of you.” He shook his head as Draco glanced up at him, hope and misery both written clearly on his face. “Did you really think I would blame  _you_  for this misfortune, Draco?”  
  
“He looks like me,” Draco said, voice very low. “I wouldn’t blame you if—“  
  
“He looks like you,” Harry said firmly. He leaned forwards to clasp Draco’s hand, but his wound pulled warningly. Draco made it easy, however, by stepping across the distance between them and slipping his fingers into Harry’s. Harry grasped them tight, ignoring the formless noise of distress from Hermione, and continued speaking words from his heart. “But he isn’t you. There are differences between you too great to be concealed by a fortunate resemblance and a little wandwork.”  
  
“Really.” Draco lifted his other hand, cradling Harry’s cheek, staring at him with devouring eyes. “You’ll let me near you even though you have to imagine his wand in the place of mine, the expression on his face as the expression on mine.”  
  
“How many different ways can I say it?” Harry countered. “You’re not him. He’s not you. I’m sure he would have liked to kill me last night, but that doesn’t mean that you want to kill me.” He managed a faint smile when Draco’s expression of hope didn’t disappear. “I know you. No fake can ever take the place I’ve created for you in my mind.”  
  
And then Draco leaned forwards and stroked his thumbs along his cheeks and said, “I know that you said you wanted to wait until you were off the case, but I—can’t,” and began to kiss him, and it felt as though several of Harry’s wet dreams had come true at once.  
  
*  
  
 _A kiss is the best move after a confession like that_ , Draco told himself coldly as he slid his tongue into Potter’s mouth.  _He’ll need some sign that he matters to you, and what better way can there be than physical passion? That’s overwhelming enough to sweep him off his feet and not let him question your feeling as he otherwise might._  
  
Because Gryffindors constantly asked questions about  _feelings_ , and Draco knew the same thing would happen now if he let Potter’s mouth go, he kissed him steadily, darting his tongue in circles and probing it into crevices that Potter probably didn’t know existed, licking his teeth and learning the taste of the back of his mouth as opposed to the front.  
  
And at some point the world shifted, and Draco found himself enjoying the kiss for what it was, instead of using it solely as a distraction technique to keep Potter from thinking about his sincerity.  
  
He had climbed into the bed. When had that happened? He didn’t know, but from the enthusiastic whimpers and careful writhing of the man beneath him, he was not unwelcome. He had flattened his hands over Potter’s wrists and pinned them to his pillow, so that he could plunge his tongue more deeply into his mouth. Potter tilted his mouth into that plunge. Draco felt a snarl trembling up his throat, and he lowered himself, so his erection ground into the one waiting for him.  
  
Potter had spent years waiting for him, years willing to offer himself as Draco’s prize. There was power in this moment so thick and sweet Draco found himself swallowing constantly to consume it all, like eating a meal consisting solely of molasses. He adjusted the angle of his body so he could slip a leg between Potter’s knees and nudge them open. Potter complied with an eager cry into his mouth. Draco snarled back and licked the corner of Potter’s lips, preparing to lower his head further and suck on his neck. Why  _shouldn’t_  he have sex with Potter? It would lead up nicely to his revenge.  
  
Then Potter tore his mouth away and uttered a genuine cry of pain. Draco looked down further and saw blood spreading over the coverlets and pillows.   
  
The sight maddened him with satisfaction. He felt as though the blood had come from the probing of his tongue into Potter’s mouth, from the bites that he’d wanted to leave on his neck. He sank his teeth into the corner of Potter’s lip one more time and then climbed gracefully off the bed, gratified to feel the blood dripping from his hair onto his shoulder.  
  
He would have liked to bathe in Potter’s blood, the way he would have liked to hold Potter’s beating heart in his open palms. Anything to consume him, to have and own him, to get rid of him so that he couldn’t trouble Draco’s life any longer.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” he gasped, outwardly horrified that he’d hurt Potter. He waved his wand and mended the wound once again, with the same layer of new-grown skin and pain-numbing charm that he’d used before, which made the patient feel better without permanently closing the injury. Then he Vanished the blood from the sheets, though not without a single longing glance. He would have enjoyed scooping that blood up in a vial and taking it down to his small museum of Potter memorabilia. Well, the blood in his hair would have to do. “I didn’t mean to do that.”  
  
Potter shook his head. His eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed as if even pain that brought the blood flowing from his wound was more attention than he had expected from Draco. Draco felt a touch of surprise. Of  _course_  it was more attention than he had a right to expect, but he had not thought Potter would recognize that.  
  
“I did say,” Potter murmured, “that we should wait until after the case to become intimate with one another.”  
  
Draco held still to conceal his impatience. Only a Gryffindor would speak of it that soppily. Really, was saying “fucking” or “having sex” beyond them? One could argue that they had already been intimate, living in the same house and eating meals together and saving each other’s lives. But that was the kind of subtlety Draco had no right to expect himself, so he nodded and said, “Yes?”  
  
“But I want you.” Potter tipped his head a little, and his gaze was full of naked hunger. Draco bathed in the force of it. Once he had thought he would feel dirty if Potter ever looked at him with desire; he had wanted to force him to submit against his will, writhing in shame even as he did it in pleasure. But this was much more pleasant. It indicated the depth of Potter’s emotions and how deeply he would feel the wound Draco intended to inflict. “And I don’t think that wanting will go away. Perhaps we can indulge ourselves a bit once this wound is healed?”  
  
Draco smiled and reached out to lay a lightly caressing hand on Potter’s breastbone. “Nothing would make me happier.”  
  
He watched Potter lap up the kindness with bright eyes, and knew that he had enticed the man into the first stages of his many-layered trap. It had been essential that Potter should suggest further intimacy himself. That way, no one could blame Draco when everything went wrong, not even Potter.  
  
Was there any greater pleasure than appearing innocent in the eyes of the world whilst getting your worst enemy in trouble?  
  
*  
  
Harry opened his eyes. He had finally removed the copper ring from his finger so he could get some sleep; Hermione had been very loud on the foolishness of having sex with Draco. Harry could appreciate why she might think it was a mistake, but he had to make his own decisions. And he thought he could fairly easily survive the consequences of a mistake, even if Hermione didn’t trust him to.  
  
Draco had left him with many promises that he would be back later to look over Harry’s comfort, and with the assurance that house-elves were within call if he needed something. So Harry had expected to rest without disturbance.  
  
Of course, Lucius Malfoy had shown a surprising persistence in talking to what must be an unwanted guest. So Harry expected to see him when he looked up, and not Snape standing motionless over his bed, staring down.  
  
It was so surprising that Harry blinked and said nothing for long moments. Snape continued to stare, his eyes deep with some emotion Harry couldn’t name. His hands were clasped in front of him as if he’d been praying, and his face was set in rigid lines. He still had grease in his hair, Harry noted absently.  
  
Harry wanted to roll his eyes. Of course Snape had come to taunt him as he lay helpless, probably to ask sneeringly if the  _Great Auror Harry Potter_  shouldn’t have been able to move out of the way in time. But it was strange that he should stand there and keep not doing it. Was he hoping to build up dread for the insult in Harry? It wouldn’t work.  
  
“You’re probably being kept from an important schedule of brewing up poisons and bathing in oil,” Harry said, striving for the drawl that he had heard Draco use to insult Keller in his office. “Give me the angry words you’ve taken such trouble to prepare and then go. You can do that without too much trouble, can’t you?”  
  
Snape still said nothing, though his fingers writhed around each other until his hands formed into a pair of clenched fists. Harry waited. He wondered, based on his experience the last time he had ventured into Snape’s lab, if he should expect a punch instead of a scowl. Or a curse? But no, Snape probably wouldn’t want to explain to Draco that he’d exaggerated Harry’s injury.  
  
Finally, Snape said in a dry sneer, “I was considering the words you had spoken last before you fainted. You said that the imposter had been on Malfoy grounds for some time before he attacked you. It never occurred to you to mention this to Mr. Malfoy when he visited you this morning, did it? Don’t you  _want_  the attacker caught?”  
  
Harry felt his face flare with heat. Of course he should have made sure that his information was known the moment he could speak coherently, but Draco had seemed to have other things on his mind, and Harry had let himself be distracted.  
  
“Sorry, sir,” he murmured. “Yes, the man was there for some time. We spoke, and he actually managed to convince me that he was Draco for a few minutes.”  
  
“Considering the general level of your intelligence, I cannot imagine that would be very difficult.”  
  
 _Good_. Harry was more comfortable with Snape in his familiar, hateful persona than he was with him in the persona of the man who had stood staring by his bed when he woke. “I know Draco,” he said, instead of the response he would have liked to make. “I know his behavior, the tones of his voice, the way he looks when he wants something. And I assure you that this imposter has every one of those perfect. It was the  _things_  he spoke of that finally alerted me. He treated architecture as a gift he couldn’t have, when of course Draco takes pride in his accomplishments as an architect. I think the imposter is a little mad, based on his behavior when I told him that he wasn’t Draco.”  
  
“Then came the attack that alerted us,” said Snape.  
  
Harry nodded.  
  
Snape drew his wand. Harry only had time to blink before it was pointed between his eyes. “Since you would be unable to give me a satisfactory picture of the proceedings no matter how many times I asked,” he said, “I trust you are unlikely to object to my simply taking them.  _Legilimens_!”  
  
Harry shuddered as the spell dug into his mind, dragging his memories of the night before to the surface. It didn’t hurt quite as much as it had when Snape ripped into his mind in his fifth year, because this time he’d been too shocked to put up any resistance. And it would look childish if he tried now, he told himself, especially since the information gained this way would only help Draco. He gritted his teeth and endured the pain, watching as the imposter engaged in that magnificent snarl again and then aimed his wand at Harry and cast the spell that had ripped his side apart.  
  
The memories abruptly stopped. Harry opened his eyes and found Snape staring at him again from near the door. Harry opened his mouth to ask if the memories had helped, but Snape turned and swirled away. Harry shut his mouth, frowning thoughtfully. The gesture of Snape’s snapping his robes behind him, which he’d seen a thousand times before, seemed different now.  
  
 _As if he were running away from something._  
  
*  
  
Lucius was aware of someone Apparating onto the long gravel drive beyond the iron gates the moment it happened, of course, but this time the visitor didn’t try to fool the wards and walked normally towards the front door. So he had no notion of who it would be when he sent a house-elf to meet the man and escort him into his presence.  
  
Lucius put his book down slowly when the door opened into the library he’d chosen as a receiving room. The book was not one of Narcissa’s diaries, because Lucius never chose to read those in semi-public, where they might be interpreted as a show of sentimental weakness by anyone who noticed them. And now Lucius was doubly glad of his caution against people in general, because he could never have known that  _this_  person would appear in Malfoy Manor, and weakness in front of him would have been inexcusable.  
  
Ron Weasley smiled politely at Lucius and stepped forwards with his hand extended, exactly as if their families had not spent generations feuding and a whole war trying to kill each other. “Hullo, Mr. Malfoy. I’m the newest Auror assigned to your son’s case by Shacklebolt.” At least he didn’t try to pretend that they’d never met each other before and therefore Lucius needed his name, Lucius thought through his shock as they shook. Weasley had rough, callused hands, of course, used to doing heavy work. “Since Harry’s been wounded,” Weasley continued, “Shacklebolt thought it only right that your son should have double the protection.”  
  
“Of course,” Lucius said, taking his hand back from Weasley as soon as it seemed reasonably polite to do so, “Potter cannot protect him at all right now.”  
  
“Hence why the Minister thought he could use protection, sir.” Weasley seemed determined to act pleasant despite the edge to Lucius’s voice, and he followed him when Lucius walked briskly out of the library into the entrance hall. “The criminal still hasn’t been caught, after all, and he’s proven himself capable of hurting a distinguished Auror.” Despite his annoyance, Lucius admired the earnest tone to Weasley’s voice. “His main target is your son. Head Auror Shacklebolt thinks that he only hurt Harry to get at Draco.” There wasn’t even any distaste when he said the name. Lucius would have to give the Weasleys credit for teaching more tact and discretion to their children than he had thought they knew existed. “So we want to make sure that he can’t take advantage of Harry’s lamentable condition and get to Draco that way.”  
  
Lucius opened his mouth to deny Weasley a place within his home—despite the polite fiction they were keeping up, Weasley  _had_  to know that he couldn’t really expect to be entertained by the Malfoys—and then paused. In his mind he saw the obsessed look on his son’s face when he closed with Potter, and Potter’s smooth, forbidding expression, shutting out the warning Lucius had tried to give him.  
  
Lucius still no chance of making an impression on Potter or keeping his son away from him. Weasley could.  
  
He made sure to keep a faint smile on his face as he turned around and nodded. “Mr. Potter is resting in one of the guest bedrooms. If you’ll come with me, I’ll escort you to him. I think my son is with him as well.”  
  
*  
  
Harry was listening to Draco’s words in a half-drugged trance. What he said didn’t matter as much as the tone with which he spoke the words, soft and lulling and full of wonder, as if he himself couldn’t believe he had the chance to associate with Harry under circumstances like these.  
  
 _He wants me. There’s a good chance that he’s falling in love with me, though he doesn’t realize it yet. People who aren’t in love don’t sound like that_. Harry only had to think back on the day that the note had faded out of Penelope’s voice to realize that. He had kept dating her because he trusted that it would come back, but it hadn’t, and then she had betrayed him to the  _Daily Prophet._  
  
He felt a tremble of disquiet, but banished it. He was going to make sure the note had no reason to fade for Draco. Harry would keep him entertained and occupied; he would show him how fulfilling it could be, to stay with one person, when that one person offered you endless companionship and devotion.  
  
Draco smiled at him. Harry’s breath caught. Yes, it had been the right decision to remove his ring. He could only imagine what Hermione would have to say about the thoughts that crowded his mind right now.  
  
A sharp knock on the door made Draco look up, but not retract his hand, which lay on Harry’s. “That must be Severus with more healing potions,” he said, and he sounded unconcerned. A brief jolt of triumph made Harry’s heart speed up. Draco was unafraid of looking sentimental in front of his mentor, then.  
  
Draco looked back as if he had felt the jolt. His eyes were soft and shining, allowing Harry to see the light in them as flame instead of the blank reflection of the sun on expensive glass. He leaned forwards, and Harry was sure he was about to receive another kiss.  
  
Then the door opened, and Lucius stepped in, followed by Ron. Harry’s mouth dropped open. Draco glanced over his shoulder casually, then straightened so fast that it looked as if he’d hurt his neck. His hand clenched furiously on Harry’s, and Harry made a muffled noise of pain, still caught in his best friend’s bright gaze.  
  
“Harry, hullo.” Ron grinned at him. “Shacklebolt sent me over when he heard that you’d been wounded. He thought it was only fair that the Malfoys should be protected, whilst you couldn’t do it, from someone so persistent that he’d come straight through the wards.” He looked at the clasp of Draco’s hand on Harry’s as if he had expected it, not even raising his eyebrows, but Draco promptly pulled back as if he had been stung.   
  
Harry scowled. He knew the real reason Ron was here. Hermione must have persuaded him to go when Harry removed the ring and she couldn’t hear his thoughts anymore. They thought he needed protection from Draco, which was ridiculous. If he was going to make a mistake, why not let him make it, as had happened with Penelope and Joshua? “I don’t think you’ll be an effective protection when your family and the Malfoys don’t get on,” he managed to say, with a bare snap of ice in his voice. “Didn’t you tell Shacklebolt that he should choose someone else?”  
  
Ron’s mouth widened into a satisfied grin. “No,” he said. “Why would I? I’m sure that we’re all adults here, and that his life being in danger—“ he nodded to Draco “—is more than enough reason to behave like them.”  
  
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Lucius. “I can guarantee my own good behavior and welcome, and I will undertake to guarantee the same for my son.”  
  
Draco’s face was so dark that Harry winced. Apart from everything else, Draco now had to endure the intrusion of someone he still obviously hated into his home. It was stress he didn’t need.  
  
“You could have said—“ Harry began.  
  
“No, I couldn’t.” Ron flopped down on the edge of the bed, between Draco and Harry, and raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t have made a clearer statement of his intentions if he’d shouted them from the rooftops.   
  
Harry glared at his best friend. His best friend smiled back.


	14. Serpent's Egg

Draco waited until he got back to his own room to explode. It was the one advantage he had so far seen from Potter’s staying in a guest bedroom whilst he recovered.  
  
And even then, the explosion was nothing like the storm of screaming and temper that Weasley would no doubt have expected from him, because of  _course_  Weasley was that vulgar. Instead, Draco closed his door and locked it with several complicated warding charms. If his father or Severus came seeking him in the next half-hour, they would know to retire until he opened the door to them of his own free will. Draco imagined the expressions on their faces and experienced his first surge of pleasure since Weasley had arrived.  
  
 _Weasley._  
  
Potter was so pathetic that he must have summoned one of his friends the moment he sensed that he might lose the game to Draco and his own overwhelming desire. He had ever wanted to be a winner; he had never cared about cheating. But of course he had to preserve the appearance of genuine competence, so he couldn’t simply demur from Draco’s advances. He had to invite a friend who just happened to disapprove of Draco and just happened to want to stand in the way instead.  
  
Draco’s hands clenched. His fingers dug hard enough into the skin of his palms to bring blood flowing. He opened his hands and gazed at the streams of red spilling free without expression.  
  
Blood. Like the blood he had wanted to bear down to his room where the collection of artifacts from Potter’s body waited.   
  
This game he played with Potter was a dance of desire and a dance of blood. Heat and passion, deep feelings that Weasley, with his shallow relationship with a woman who hadn’t even known she was a witch before her eleventh birthday, couldn’t comprehend. He could guard his friend, yes, but never enough. In the end, Potter’s own longing for Draco would pull him out from under that guardianship and deliver him to Draco.  
  
Draco could feel his breath quickening as he pictured Potter creeping into his bed, shaken by his own lust. His imaginary Potter reached out and traced a hand above the hairs on his arm, and then the dream Draco rolled on top of him and half-smothered him into the bed, clasping his shoulders and kissing him greedily. Draco discovered in that moment that it was possible to be jealous of oneself.  
  
He merely had to tempt, to show himself to Potter in good lights and with longing glances of his own until Potter’s groin overpowered his reason. He was healing rapidly, and so he would lose the chance to use his wound as an excuse in a few days. He would return to full-time duty protecting Draco.   
  
He would  _see_  Draco, as Draco had not before shown himself to anyone. There had been no one else he desired to defeat this much.  
  
Potter admired him as an architect, didn’t he? Then he should see the Keller house, which Draco was ready to begin preparing.  
  
Potter was drawn to his physical attributes. Draco knew a number of potions and subtle charms that would show them off and make it seem like nothing more than the normal effect of attraction when Potter responded; the potions, in particular, could be tuned to one recipient, the way that love potions usually were.  
  
Potter liked touching him, and he liked sweet, soft words, the way that all Gryffindors did. Draco could sacrifice his own dignity for a few days, when he knew he would win the greater gift of Potter’s humiliation. His vengeance would be more vicious because of that sacrifice, anyway.  
  
Draco felt his tense lips, tightly clamped shut just a moment ago, relaxing into a smile.  
  
He would have Potter, after all.  
  
*  
  
“What do you think you’re doing, mate?”  
  
What made the words hard to hear was that Ron spoke so kindly. He’d taken the chair Draco had occupied the moment the other man left the room, and he stared Harry straight in the eyes as he spoke, a faint, sad smile on his face. His voice demanded nothing—or rather, it suggested that he knew Harry had a reasonable answer he would give as soon as he was reasonably asked for it. It had never been like this in the past, when his friends had assumed he was obsessed with Draco for no good reason.  
  
Harry stared at his hands instead, and swallowed. He had an idea now what Ron must have seen when he opened the door, and for all that he believed Draco was worthy of regard and esteem, he flushed.  
  
“Why do you want him so much?” Ron whispered. “Isn’t there anyone,  _anyone_ , in the world who could possibly mean what he does to you and be less dangerous? Please, Harry.” He reached out and laid a gentle, insistent hand on Harry’s knee. His fingers came near the wound. They didn’t really hurt, but Harry was glad enough of the excuse to flinch and stir so that Ron could see the full extent of the bandaging. Maybe he would feel sorry enough for Harry to give up the questioning.  
  
“Merlin.”  
  
Ron was on his feet, and his expression had hardened to the point that Harry felt briefly sorry for the imposter. Then Ron flicked his wand, and a sluice of cool, soothing magic cascaded over the injury. Harry sighed and leaned his head back on the pillow, free of pain for the first time since he’d awoken that morning.  
  
“They don’t even give you proper healing spells, do they?’ Ron shook his head, eyes fastened on Harry’s face. “Mate,  _please_. Say that you’ll heal and then let Kingsley pull you off the case, or at least this part of it. I’ve discovered a few clues that might eventually lead us closer to who this bloke is. Protect Malfoy from that direction. Leave this part of it to me.”  
  
Harry bit his lip. Ron had never begged him for anything like he was begging for this now.  
  
“I can’t,” he said, and then wondered that he had. He’d meant to keep silent and let Ron get upset at him for being a stubborn arse, but no. That wasn’t quite good enough anymore. He had to try to explain, even though he doubted anyone outside this private dance between him and Malfoy could understand. He lifted his head and sought Ron’s eyes, wondering for a moment what his own looked like. Blind, sun-dazzled, filled with a  _lack_  of sense? Maybe. “Ron, he’s like gravity. He draws me, and if I tried to go elsewhere, all I would think about would be him. I couldn’t possibly do a good job on the investigation. I would run back to the Manor at the earliest opportunity, or maybe get myself killed if the imposter appeared in front of me again. I  _have_  to go over the waterfall, or go into the trap, or—use whatever metaphor you want to use, I’ve got to do it.”  
  
Ron stared at him with his lips slightly parted. Then he whistled shakily and sat down. The last thing Harry expected to hear him whisper was, “I understand.”  
  
Harry blinked.  
  
“I knew a woman like that once,” Ron went on, staring up at the ceiling. Harry looked up, too, but saw only the curves and patterns of snowflakes melting into streams that he had memorized in his first day flat on his back. The Malfoys favored more delicate decorations for their guest rooms than the ones they lived in, it seemed. “It was during that period of about six months right before Hermione and I got back together, you remember? That stretch of time when we didn’t speak to each other at all?”  
  
Harry nodded. He retained his own memories of that time, when he had been Ron’s friend and Hermione’s friend, but couldn’t be both at the same moment, which had always been possible before. Sometimes it came back to him in dreams as a series of months when he had walked across blazing stone. He’d gone off by himself and got drunk and maudlin and weepy when they’d finally started speaking again.  
  
“There was a woman in the second month.” Ron closed his eyes as if he could see her before him again. “I saw her when I was doing some shopping for Ginny’s birthday in Diagon Alley. Standing behind one of the counters; I didn’t know then if she was a patron at the shop or if she worked there. She had a sapphire in one hand, set in a silver star-shaped pendant. The silver was the exact shade of her hair.”  
  
“She was older?” Harry blinked. If he had to say anything against Ron, it would be that his friend was sometimes shallow in the way he related to women, Hermione and his sister excepted. He tended to drool over Fleur even now when he thought she wasn’t looking. Harry wouldn’t have thought an older woman had the chance to attract Ron.  
  
“She had silver hair,” Ron said with a curious obstinacy in his voice. “And she looked up, and I saw her eyes were green, about the shade of yours, mate. That was all I cared about. And there was an expression on her face as if she’d been using the pendant to see the future, and it had actually worked. That dreaming serenity.” He half-closed his eyes this time. “She turned around, put the pendant down on the counter, and walked out of the shop. I followed her. I had to know her name, see where she went.  
  
“I never learned the first, not for certain. I heard someone call her Rebecca. That was enough for me. It was like learning her last name would make her too real, and then I’d have to think about whether I’d heard of her family, what side of the war they fought on, whether she had relatives in the Auror Department—“ Ron gave a harsh shrug of his shoulders and leaned forwards, staring intently at Harry. “You know what I mean?”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. He had gone through enough contortions in his head, God knew, when he had first begun to be attracted to Draco, mentally separating Draco from the man who had hurt Ginny with Tom Riddle’s diary and the boy who had nearly killed Ron and Katie Bell in their sixth year. The arguments he used to persuade himself weren’t always reasonable, but what did fascination care about reason?  
  
“I listened to her speak. Her voice paralyzed me. I didn’t want to go up to her and introduce myself, though I could have. As far as I knew, I would never marry Hermione at that point. But I just wanted to be quiet and look at her.”  
  
Harry shivered and licked his lips. He wanted to say that that didn’t make sense, that Ron couldn’t have fallen in love just from looking at this woman, and that he obviously  _had_  got back together with Hermione and loved her again. And if Ron had managed to fall in love with this Rebecca somehow, why hadn’t he gone and talked to her? Nothing about it made  _any_  sense.  
  
Except that it did. Except that it was how he felt with Draco, when the other man touched him and Harry thought he would give up his job as an Auror and his freedom and his eyesight to have Draco look at him with passion, kiss him, stroke him and bind his hands above his head.  
  
“I  _understand_ , mate,” Ron said, his voice so quiet that his words came to Harry like an echo. “I understand how persuasive and gripping fascination is, and that you can’t really let go of it when you’re in it. You want just a little more, just a touch or a glance or an acknowledgment from the object of your obsession. That would be enough to satisfy you, you tell yourself. Just that much and you’ll go. When you  _know_  that’s not the truth, and you’ll never be satisfied until or unless you get as much from that person as you’ve invested in them.   
  
“Mate, I pulled back from it after three days of watching her. I understood what my obsession was doing to me—drugging me, stealing the best part of my life to moon over a woman who wouldn’t have understood even if I approached her. She was a private, self-contained person; I learned that much from the days I watched her. She couldn’t have understood falling in love within three minutes, and that would have made me unhappy, because I needed her to understand that.”  
  
“You didn’t fall in love with Hermione in three minutes,” Harry muttered, determined not to comprehend what Ron was trying to tell him.  
  
“No,” said Ron. “But that’s all right, because my relationship with her isn’t obsessive.” Harry would have liked to snort at that, remembering how closely Ron and Hermione had watched each other during their sixth year and how jealous they had been of the people the other had dated in their place, but he couldn’t. He and Ron understood each other too well, on  _far_  too many levels, during this conversation, and mockery would throw Ron’s confidence and gesture of trust back in his face. “You need someone to match you in passion when you fall that strongly. And I don’t think Malfoy can.”  
  
“You haven’t seen the way he looks at me sometimes.”  
  
Ron’s face was grave. “I don’t need to. Frankly, mate, it doesn’t matter if he feels as strongly about you as you do about him. His passion’s not—not  _clean_.”  
  
Harry scowled. “You’ll never get over the fact that he was a Death Eater, will you?”  
  
“Not what I meant,” Ron said. His eyes reflected disappointment that made Harry squirm, which irritated the wound, which required Ron to use another healing spell. He looked a bit calmer when he continued. “What I meant was that he might want you, might think he loves you, but there’s something sneaky and cowardly and self-interested behind it. You want to give him things. He wants to take them from you.”  
  
“You don’t know how he’s changed, Ron. You’re basing your conclusions on what he  _used_  to be like—“  
  
“I think it’s a lot more likely that he’s changed in  _some_  things, as many as he needs to to gain back some reputation and some clients after the war,” Ron said sharply. “In other things, why shouldn’t he be exactly the same? He wouldn’t want to abandon ambition or give up the hopes of a grand victory someday.”  
  
Harry sighed. “The truth of the matter is that you haven’t watched him long enough, and I have, even during times when he didn’t know I was there. He couldn’t have been putting on a show  _all_  the time.”  
  
“Was he with other people?” Ron asked.  
  
“What?” Harry didn’t know what that question meant. “Do you mean, did he have other lovers? Sure he did, and so did I, but it’s not like I knew that he could possibly be interested in me that way, and he—“  
  
“I mean,” Ron said patiently, “did you ever watch him when he was by himself, or only when he was with clients?”  
  
“With clients, mostly,” Harry said, wondering what the point of this question was. “Sometimes he was by himself for a minute or two.”  
  
“Then he was still acting,” said Ron. “You’ve drawn your knowledge of him from that performance, Harry.”  
  
“He’s been alone with me plenty of times over the last few days,” Harry snapped, stung. Really, where did Ron get off imagining he knew Draco better than Harry did? He knew  _some parts_  of Draco. Harry was willing to admit that Draco had a cruel streak, that not every trait of his personality was equally attractive. But Ron hadn’t guarded Draco, he hadn’t saved his life, and he hadn’t seen Draco’s instant contrition when he’d opened Harry’s wound with his savage kiss earlier. “I think I know him.”  
  
“You think.” Ron shook his head, mouth set in a hard line. “No, mate. I’m sorry. I tried to stay out of it as long as I could, because I thought Hermione was being paranoid and intruding far too much into your life with that bloody ring of hers. But you’ll run your head blindly into the noose. I’m stepping between you and Malfoy as of this moment.” He stood up, turned, and walked out of the room.  
  
“Ron!” Harry shouted after him. He sat up and then winced as he felt a warning pull from the wound. But he didn’t care, even though he couldn’t get out of bed. “Ron, what the fuck are you doing?” The door shut with no sign that Ron had heard him or was going to turn back. “Ron, sod  _off_!”  
  
*  
  
Draco had gone to the Manor’s Quidditch Pitch as the first step in his new plan. Potter would probably come out soon, seeking him, and why shouldn’t he see Draco soaring gracefully above the grass on his new Clearstar broom? Let him stare and admire, perhaps even envy. Draco no longer made a habit of chasing Snitches, but he would wager he’d been up on a broom more often in the last several years than Potter, who seemed to be busy either with Auror work or entertaining a traitorous lover.   
  
 _Among whom you will soon number._  
  
Draco bit his lip hard enough to draw blood and directed the Clearstar into a hawk-like circle. Of course he was different than the hapless men and women who swarmed into Potter’s bed, drawn by fame and what they saw as beauty. He was repaying Potter’s treachery to him, which had begun when they were eleven years old and never really stopped, since Potter hadn’t once apologized.  
  
A movement behind him made him look down, and he started to stoop the broom before he realized the figure had red hair. He curled his lip and turned his head away. Perhaps Weasley would carry the report of his flying to Potter, and then the idiot would drag himself out of the bed to look. Of course, Weasley was much more likely to lie and say that Draco had flown poorly, but—  
  
“Malfoy! I want to talk to you.”  
  
Draco flinched.  _Of course. How crude_. Weasley might not have a broom of his own, but he’d cast  _Sonorus_  and direct his voice all over the Pitch as if he had something important to say. Draco turned and gave him the flaying look that he used with clients who wanted him to add an extra wing onto the house at the original price. It was too bad that the distance between them meant Weasley wouldn’t see it and grasp all the nuances Draco wanted him to take away. “Go away, Weasley,” he called back. “I have nothing to say to you.”  
  
“That doesn’t matter,” said Weasley. “You only need ears to listen to me, not a voice to speak responses. I’m interested in your brain, though God knows if I can reach it.”  
  
Draco bristled, and then wondered why. It wasn’t as though Weasley’s insults were brilliant ones he wished he had thought of himself, or strong enough to sting. He was in a hypersensitive mood because he wanted to impress Potter, he supposed, and so far Potter had not been obliging enough to let Draco do that.  
  
“I understand all about obsession,” said Weasley. “I understand that Harry isn’t the kind of person who hurts the one he’s obsessed with. He’s more likely to hurt himself, and hover around the fringes of your life and worship, and get his heart quietly broken when you finally wed some pure-blood bitch.”  
  
Draco bit the corner of his mouth so he wouldn’t call back that Potter would get his heart broken before then. Honestly, there was no need to shout his plans to the world just because he was rather bereft of an audience at the moment. Sometimes Draco simply didn’t understand his own instincts.   
  
“But  _you_ ,” said Weasley, and his voice held a world of loathing that made Draco wish they were on the ground, face to face, and Weasley could clearly see the crystalline contempt in his expression. “You’ll try to rip the one you’re obsessed with limb from limb, as punishment for their making you focus on something beside yourself. You’ll befoul what you touch on purpose, because you can’t tolerate the idea that anyone else would get satisfaction or pleasure from it. I  _know_  you, Malfoy, much better than Harry does. And hear this. I won’t let you hurt him. I’ll make him hate me, if I have to, because he won’t hate you, but that’s better than letting him bleed from a wound that would destroy his entire life.”  
  
And Weasley turned and walked away.  
  
For long moments afterwards, Draco continued to hover on his broom, hands clamped around his broom handle, his breath so thick with anger it felt as if he were strangling on the sputum from a cough. Then he managed to relax the hold of his hands and loop around in a large circle, thinking hard.  
  
Would Weasley actually be a threat? He had no idea what Draco planned to do to Potter. He was surely no match for a Potter who actually wanted to sleep with Draco, since Potter was the more magically powerful. But it was possible he could appeal to Potter’s conscience and friendship and sense of shame, and make it harder for Draco. Or he might even manage to tip things the other way in a delicate moment.  
  
Yes, he would have to ensure that Potter slipped out to meet him as soon as it was practical for him to do so, with his wound. The courtship and seduction were best off taking place out of Weasley’s sight.  
  
“Draco.”  
  
Draco started and looked down. It sounded as if Severus had spoken right next to him, but he was waiting on the far side of the Pitch, staring upwards. He hadn’t used  _Sonorus_ , of course—he had more dignity than that—but a spell that projected his voice directly from his lungs to Draco’s ear. Draco dropped in a stoop that made Severus shake his head and landed in front of his mentor.  
  
Severus looked him over in silence. Draco thought there was a hint of disapproval behind the glassy surface of his eyes, but he had no idea why that would exist, if it did. He generally only became angry when Draco ruined a potion, and that hadn’t happened in years.  
  
“I have one caution to speak to you,” said Severus at last. “It is the only interference I will permit myself in this affair, the only debt I owe.”  
  
Draco blinked. His father had told him that Severus had healed Potter’s wound, but what in the world did that healing have to do with Draco?  
  
“Potter is not the hero I thought him,” said Severus, “not the mindless attention-seeker. When he was nearly fainting with the pain of his wound, he still concentrated long enough to tell me about the attacker. He was concerned with the danger to  _you_ , and standing between you and that danger.” Severus curled is lip. “If you harm him, you will do worse than bring the wrath of the Ministry down on you. You will betray the friendship of someone who has decided that you are worth guarding.”  
  
Draco laughed. There was simply no other response possible to a declaration that absurd. “Severus, what he feels for me isn’t friendship.”  
  
“It is only practical,” said Severus, “that you delay your vengeance until this imposter is in custody and you no longer need Potter’s protection.”  
  
Draco immediately shook his head. That was impossible, and he was somewhat mystified Severus didn’t know that. Would  _he_  have been able to give up vengeance against Potter when it was within his grasp? “I won’t do that.”  
  
Severus bowed his head. “This is the only interference I will permit myself,” he repeated, and then turned and walked away.  
  
Draco snorted and kicked his broom into the air again, where he did several violent swoops and dives to relieve his feelings. First Weasley and then Severus. Even his father might have tried, if he didn’t already know that Draco was committed to ignoring him. Could no one else understand that Draco  _needed_  this, and that what he needed should be allowed to be more important, for once, than Potter’s life? 


	15. In Passion We Propose

Harry snorted at himself as he cast yet another healing spell on the wound, and watched more skin knit together and more of the jagged line that announced his injury to the world blur and soften and scar. He’d been an idiot, lying here and depending on Ron and Draco for healing spells, when all he had to do to get his wand back was call out, “ _Accio_  wand!”   
  
 _Of all the times to forget I can do magic without it_ , he thought, but he knew that that wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t  _forgotten_. He simply hadn’t seen the need to Summon it when Draco had been taking care of him, speaking gentle words and looking stricken when he made the wound worse.  
  
Harry had uncovered his need to be taken care of long enough ago that he accepted it now. It didn’t make him feel less like an effective Auror. He could spend days protecting others and bringing criminals to justice whenever he wanted to recover the adrenaline jolt that heroic action gave him. But at other times he wanted to lie down on the bed and turn his head towards a lover, eyes closed, and feel soft and soothing hands moving on his skin.  
  
 _Draco will not be soft and soothing._  
  
Harry shivered, then swallowed. No. If Draco had felt anything like the same depth of desire for anything like as long as Harry had, then he would rip and tear and devour. But even that could be a form of caring, Harry thought, maintaining a stubborn front against the ghost of Ron that appeared to be haunting his head. He could bind Harry down and show him the passion too strong to be denied any longer.  
  
And Harry would enjoy being bound.  
  
At last the pain of his wound had eased enough that he thought he could walk without embarrassing himself. He stood and slipped out of the room, leaning carefully against the wall. If Ron came, he was prepared to cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, but he could think of no one else whose presence would dismay him. Lucius he could ignore. Snape would hardly care to interfere if there was a chance that Harry’s activities might open the injury again. And if he met Draco—  
  
Harry closed his eyes and licked his lips with quiet fervor, thoughts prowling around and touching Draco with gentle fingers.  _If I meet Draco, then I’ll let him take me._  
  
He paused at a juncture of wide corridors, suddenly aware that he had never been in this part of Malfoy Manor before and really had no idea where to go next. So he paused and thought about where Draco might have gone when Ron appeared and irritated him.  
  
 _Somewhere he can be free. His bedroom wouldn’t be enough, I think, since it’s indoors. And he won’t go back to the office as long as there’s that gaping hole in his wards, not when the imposter is so insistent._  
  
A place where he could feel the wind in his hair and the pressure of freedom around him…  
  
Harry turned towards the front door he remembered seeing during his initial scouting round of Malfoy Manor on unsteady legs. Draco would be on the Quidditch Pitch, of course.  
  
*  
  
Lucius sank deep into the padded chair with a small sigh. Potter was recovering from the wound, and he now had a friend to watch over him much as Lucius had promised Narcissa that he would watch over Draco. Surely the matter of his son’s obsession costing him everything valuable was attended to for the moment, and that meant Lucius could settle into place with his most valuable possession: the diary of Narcissa’s that was most beautiful and least doom-laden, the book that told her perspective on the day Draco had been born.   
  
The blue-edged creamy paper flickered past under Lucius’s fingers. This diary was seventeen years older than the other, and Lucius did not think he had to worry quite as much about damaging it. He flattened his hands on the pages, and imagined that he felt a welcome from them, as if the ghosts of Narcissa’s hopes impregnated them and marched side by side with his for a moment.  
  
It was only a moment, because then Lucius had to bow his head and read the words of the woman who had lived by his side as a stranger for decades.  
  
 _I have a son.  
  
I say that I have a son, and not that Lucius has a son, or the House of Malfoy or the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black have a son, because he is mine. I see that from the way he turns his head and fastens his eyes on me, pale and dim yet, their color unsettled between blue and gray. I see that from the way I carried him in my body, and the way he gleams, as if the blood and the amniotic fluid were not yet washed from him. Lucius ordered him bathed in cold water soon after his birth, a Malfoy test of strength that has endured for generations. I wonder that they do not connect the large number of their children who died as infants to that test.   
  
But as coldness is more important to Lucius than blood and he carries ice in his own veins, my wonder is out of place._  
  
Lucius shook his head. “Narcissa, how could you not see that I loved you?” he whispered. “How could you not see that I loved Draco? If I retreated behind an iron mask that day, it was only because I felt so proud and happy that I thought some dark fate would clasp us at any moment, and take my wife and son from me.”  
  
The diary continued without pause, Narcissa’s thoughts and not his. Lucius sighed and murmured the words aloud as he read them, because he had scanned this passage enough times to know the whole.  
  
 _He lies at my breast, detached from me, no longer part of me. My body no longer shelters him. We can be hurt separately now. Lucius spoke his usual form of nonsense about that, about how some of his enemies would disdain to destroy a pregnant woman, but would consider his heir a target from the moment he enters the world.  
  
He does not think of the protection I am.  
  
I have heard comparisons of angry mothers to lionesses roused to protect their cubs. Such things are nonsense. I know there will be no lioness-like anger in me if someone hurts Draco—because that is his name, a Black name. Lucius wanted to call him Abraxas. I looked at him with eyes that Bellatrix has told me shine like moons sometimes, and he yielded and chose the name of the strongest constellation he could think of._  
  
Lucius shivered and wiped his lips, wishing for a moment he could have a cup of hot tea—but he didn’t want to risk tea around Narcissa’s diaries. Here was a mention of Bellatrix in this entry from years ago, as if Narcissa had been able to foresee how intimately involved her sister would be in her end, just as her love for Draco had been intimately involved in her end.  
  
Then Lucius took a deep breath and rested his head against the back of the chair until his whirling mind cleared again. He believed in destiny, but only as regarded prophecies and other workings of mighty magic that were truly inevitable. If he once began to believe that fate rested in the mention of a name on a page, then he would drive himself as mad as Draco thought he was.  
  
And madness would hinder his ability to understand Narcissa and to protect his son, the only things that mattered to him anymore.  
  
He opened his eyes and read on.  
  
 _If someone hurts my son, I will kill them. That is all there is, all that matters. My wand and my will will rise against them from that time forwards, and they will be dead. It does not matter if it takes months or years. They will die._  
  
Lucius shivered and suffered another surge of yearning that Narcissa had trusted him with her innermost self instead of the superficial, correct façade she had believed he needed to love and protect. He would have admired a woman like this beyond all things. He would have laid his heart at her feet for her to tread to dust and ashes, if she wished.   
  
And he could have put limitations to her grandiose ambition. He could have reminded her that there was at least one person in the world too powerful for her to destroy, if he threatened Draco: the Dark Lord. And together they could have worked out a plan for what would happen should Draco be threatened from that quarter after all.  
  
Of course, at the time of Draco’s birth, Lucius had not truly believed that would ever happen. But he would have brought up the  _possibility_ , and then Narcissa would not have died as she did.  
  
If she had trusted him. If he had been more trustworthy.  
  
 _If Lucius hurts my son, then I will kill him, too. I can imagine him writhing beneath my wand because he has crossed that line that I will not permit him to cross. He has never learned to appreciate that I mean what I say. I would share my contempt and hatred if I could, and I do, in many small motions that must take the place of words.  
  
My husband has been a chain clasped about my life, an iron bar braced across my chest and preventing me from moving forwards. He was necessary for the birth of my son and to bring peace to my parents. But there is nothing else that he gives me in the way of freedom or peace. My son, dozing beneath my breast, brings me both._  
  
Lucius closed his eyes and sighed. “There are more important things than freedom or peace, Narcissa,” he whispered. “I wish you could have understood that. There is honor, and pride—“   
  
He stopped, because the bile was burning in his throat and the memories of how Narcissa had died filled his head. He could see the splayed and broken bones, the spilled blood that shone black in the moonlight stabbing through a shattered window. He could hear Bellatrix shrieking, and feel the shame coiling about his limbs when he began to put the tale together from those shrieks.   
  
Nothing he could do. Nothing he could change, with Narcissa gone from his life.   
  
But he would do well to remember, he reckoned, that she had been wrong about some things, no matter how compelling her words.  
  
*  
  
Draco knew the moment Potter limped onto the Pitch, his head tilted back and his eyes fastened on the broom. He marveled that he could ever have mistaken Weasley or Severus for him. Potter’s nearness made his blood tingle and surge against the vein walls. He could feel his heart expanding, his breaths coming stronger and deeper and faster. And he experienced a heady surge of emotion so powerful he could not identify it. Joy, anger, hatred? Any of them would have been an appropriate response to Potter and what Potter’s presence meant for him.   
  
Trembling, Draco swooped down and landed his broom a few feet from Potter. For a moment, the green eyes widened, and the lightning bolt scar stood out like a red scratch on Potter’s pale brow. But then the startlement melted from his face, replaced by a smile, and he held out a hand.  
  
Draco took it in silence and turned it over, tracing the lines on the palm with his thumb as if he were a Seer who sought to divine Potter’s future that way. Potter’s fingers trembled in his, and his eyelids darted and flickered, so quick that it looked as if he were dreaming.  
  
No one else could understand what they shared in this moment, Draco thought. They were like the hunter and his prey enclosed in a swift green world of their own, whirling around in a dance of limbs before the blood was spilled. No one else who had not tracked the prey could understand the hunter’s instinctive sympathy for it; no one else who had not run from the hunter could understand the way in which the prey cocked back his head, listening for a footstep with determination to survive so great that it drove out fear.  
  
Draco knew what Potter wanted without question. He reached out an arm and curved it around Potter’s waist, drawing him nearer. Potter came without protest, though Draco knew from the position of his arm that he was pressing directly on the wound. His head was tilted back, his stunning eyes shut, his breath rising and falling like ripples in a pond dying away from a tossed stone.   
  
Draco seated him on the broom and admired him there for a moment. Potter shifted forwards, adjusting his seat on the Clearstar without instruction. Draco would have bet he had never ridden a broom like this before, since they were only a few years old and probably too expensive for him to afford on an Auror’s pay. But still he moved with that inherent talent that had made Draco burn to beat him in Quidditch, just once.  
  
A surge of old resentment tried to rise in him. Draco smoothed it out again. That crusty emotion was nothing compared to the glowing, nameless one that irradiated his body like an unknown color in the middle of sunset. He did not mind losing those ancient Quidditch games as long as he won  _this_  contest, the more recent one, the only one that mattered.  
  
And Potter’s friends could not keep him safe. Draco had to acknowledge that he would revel in stealing Potter out from under Weasley’s nose.  
  
At last Potter was seated, and Draco sat down behind him, wrapping both arms around his waist so that his hands could reach the shaft of the broom. Potter leaned his head back on Draco’s shoulder. Draco felt Potter’s breath stir the hair next to his ear, and exhaled hard, his hands shaking with excitement.  
  
That would never do. He needed a clear head to fly the broom. He shut his eyes and waited until the excitement should have died down. But Potter’s head never moved, and the excitement never died.  
  
At last, Draco cleared his throat roughly and whispered, “Up.”   
  
The broom surged. Potter drew in a single awed breath, probably at the speed and smooth movement of the Clearstar, but didn’t try to snatch control, which Draco had been half-afraid of. They rose, and rose, and rose.  
  
They broke through the low-lying clouds. Draco opened his eyes, and the blue stretched ahead of them in an endless dazzle, turned to blade-like beauty by the mid-afternoon rays of the sun.  
  
*  
  
Lucius stepped out of the library and nearly ran headlong into the Weasley who had claimed his hospitality. He raised an eyebrow and moved in such a way that it would seem as if he were leaning forwards to confront Weasley, rather than catching his balance against the door, as he truly was. “Is something wrong?” he asked, basing his question on the deep flush of Weasley’s cheeks that competed with his hair and the way he was staring around the corridor in distraction.  
  
“Harry’s gone,” said Weasley at once. “And so is your son.”  
  
Lucius crushed his fear in a ruthless grip. “Perhaps they have gone flying together,” he said, with a light, careless shrug. “There is no reason to fear that the imposter has taken them. He has so far proven no match for Potter in battle.”  
  
“Yes, that’s why Harry was laid up in bed with an enormous bloody wound and  _inadequate healing spells_ ,” Weasley snapped at him, and then leaned around the corner as if he would see Potter and Draco snogging in a corner.  
  
Lucius’s eyebrows climbed up to his hairline. “I was under the impression that the Aurors considered the man imitating my son the only threat of any note, Weasley,” he said. “Is there someone else you are hunting?”  
  
“I’m worried that Malfoy kidnapped Harry, of course, you enormous prat,” said Weasley, in such an impatient tone that Lucius could hardly take offense; it was too obvious that most of Weasley’s concern was for his friend, and the insult to Lucius only a matter of form. “He’s obsessed with him, and his obsession is more dangerous than Harry’s any day.”  
  
“So your friend is also obsessed with my son?” Lucius sighed. He had gathered so, from the way that Potter’s eyes followed Draco and the blind way that he believed in Draco’s assertions of Lucius’s insanity, but he had hoped he was dealing with an emotion of some lesser strength.  
  
“You had better believe it.” Weasley wheeled towards him suddenly, tilting and rocking on his heels as if someone had struck him. “I don’t think his obsession is as destructive and dangerous, but it’s there.” His eyes were dark, and he sucked on the corner of his lower lip. Lucius shuddered. That was a disgusting habit. Leave it to a Weasley to have one like it. “I can’t promise that Harry wouldn’t do something desperate if he thought that someone was trying to keep him away from Malfoy. He certainly sounded desperate when I told him I was here to do just that.”  
  
“And to protect my son.”  
  
Weasley gave him a smile that Lucius had to admire, so cold and efficient was it. “The best way to do that is by keeping him away from Harry, so that  _I_  don’t have to kill him.”  
  
Lucius shook his head and gave up the argument that was forming in his head. Arguing when his son might be in danger was something Severus, with his irrational hatred of the Potters, would do. “You can’t find them in the Manor,” he said. “But you do not know the Manor. I know the places Draco favors and the rooms that he might take Potter to if he did not wish to be disturbed. Come with me.”  
  
Weasley followed him as he strode rapidly up the corridor. Despite his muttering, and the seriousness of the situation that could see a Weasley and a Malfoy acting in concert, Lucius found himself smiling.  
  
 _I am protecting my son, Narcissa, from a situation that could destroy him. And he is my son as much as yours. And I shall be just as ruthless if Draco tries to harm himself because of his lack of self-knowledge as I shall be if Weasley points a wand at him._  
  
*  
  
Harry leaned back against Draco’s chest and thought for a moment how similar their positions were to the ones in a dream he had had, where Draco came to bear him away from all the faults and wrongs of the world. When Harry was feeling in a particularly victorious mood, then he was the one who steered the broom and cradled Draco on the way. But most of the time the dream went exactly like this, with Draco holding him and flying at the same time, a combination of the protectiveness and strength that thrilled Harry.  
  
He wanted a strong partner, he could admit in the privacy of his brain if nowhere else, and he wanted that strength directed at his. Sometimes he wanted to wrestle with it, meet it and match it, and fall with his lover in a tangle of limbs. Sometimes he wanted to dominate and kiss and stroke and clutch until his lover was breathing heavily and writhing in the way that Ginny would call wanton.  
  
But a good portion of the time he wanted strength that could pull him in and shelter him—from nightmares, from memories of the war, from the horrors that he saw in his job as an Auror. The shelter wouldn’t be forever. Harry knew all about waking from nightmares and recovering from an unpleasant scene on the job and hastening right back to work. But it would be long enough that he could learn to breathe again and shake free of the dark shapes ghosting across the back of his eyelids.   
  
That was part of the reason he thought Draco would be such a good partner for him, his admiration for Draco’s artistic talent and his fascination with Draco’s compound of good and evil aside. Harry knew that Draco possessed enough strength to leave an impact on him, given how effortlessly he had hurt Harry during school. If he wanted to use that strength to soothe and heal instead…  
  
The contrast made Harry’s mouth water just thinking about it. And now he was in Draco’s arms, and he was in a daze. He had never imagined that he could feel this good from the simplest of touches.  
  
He didn’t know where Draco was flying them. He didn’t care. So long as they kept simply going in one direction or curving in a gentle sweep to go in another, so long as they sat on the same broom and Draco’s breath brushed the hair by his ear now and then, it didn’t matter.  
  
The broom began to spiral down at last. Harry looked down and blinked to see a gray waste of ocean beneath them. Either they had flown faster than he had known was possible on a broom, even one of this spectacular model, or he had completely lost track of time. Seeing the stars appearing like muted streaks of light on a Muggle telly in the upper corners of the air, he knew the second was more likely.  
  
Malfoy landed on the seashore—what there was of it, since it was mostly sheer cliff sloping down to a narrow pebbled strand. Harry climbed off, stretching his sore limbs, and stared around curiously. The cliffs formed a series of curving headlands, which could look like the edges of eagles’ wings or clouds if he stared at them hard enough.  
  
“Do you know what this will be?”  
  
Harry stifled the impulse to lean back on Draco’s shoulder again. He doubted that Draco would be so tolerant of that when they were on the ground. He had to show that he was strong enough to deserve Draco, too. “No,” he answered, his voice breathy.  
  
“The site of the Keller house.” Draco took several steps away and then faced him again, his eyes glinting. They were the image of the sea, Harry thought, staring at him in a sort of hypnosis. Not as many colors, perhaps, but just as restless. “I’ll raise it here, because his original plans were  _hopeless_. It has to fit the land. Like this.” He whirled around and flicked his wand twice.  
  
An illusion rose glittering from the cliffs, complete and perfect in seconds. Harry caught his breath. This was the first time that he had seen one of Draco’s houses without the clutter of stone and other material that formed them. If a house could be built of the gray light catching on the sea and reflecting from the shore below, of the skim of clouds along the surface of the sky and foam on the surface of the water, of the gathered strength of stone purified of solidity and the grace of seals purified of their waddling on land, then it was this house.  
  
Harry knew his admiration was open on his face, but he didn’t care. Draco deserved to see it. He turned towards him and stared what he felt, because he knew he could not speak it.   
  
*  
  
As he stared at Potter, Draco felt that same nameless emotion roll like a boulder into his chest. He still did not understand exactly what it was, but he knew that he wanted to keep feeling it, and that he wanted Potter to keep looking at him. None of the grimaces of pain or the screams of agony he had imagined would do.  _This_  was the expression he wanted to see on Potter’s face for the rest of his life.  
  
 _Yes. This is what triumph looks like._


	16. A Madness Most Discreet

“Where  _are_  they?”  
  
Lucius winced. “I would prefer that you not shout in my home, Mr. Weasley,” he said, with more politeness than he had ever thought one of Arthur’s children would deserve from him, “no matter how angry you are.”  
  
Weasley whirled around, his mouth contorted in an ugly sneer. For a moment, it seemed possible that he would say something unfortunate. Lucius lifted his chin and his eyebrows. If Weasley wanted to get in a duel, then he should pursue that course.  
  
But Weasley took a deep breath, shuddered once, and said, “Sorry,  _sir_.” Lucius let the emphasis on the title go for now. “But do you have the slightest idea where they could be? We’ve checked most of the Manor, the Quidditch Pitch—“ he glared out the front door at the Pitch as if it were the fault of the wind and the grass that no one was there “—and all the bedrooms. Where else could they be?”  
  
Clucking his tongue softly over the amount of redundancy that Hogwarts did not bother to eliminate from its students’ vocabularies, Lucius put his hand on his wand and closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating. He had an ancient tracking charm that he’d put on Draco years ago and rarely activated, because it was powerful enough to alert his son if he used it carelessly. But wherever Draco was, Potter was with him, and Lucius thought that meant he was likely to be too emotionally—and physically—occupied to notice the buzz of the charm around his body.  
  
Lucius waited. And waited. And then opened his eyes with a frown to see Weasley hovering in front of him like a kestrel hovering over prey.  
  
“Well?” Even the tone with which Weasley demanded the answer was sufficient to make Lucius curl his lip. But his conclusion disturbed him enough that he answered in a calm voice.  
  
“I have a tracking charm on Draco. It does not locate them on Manor grounds. They must be far enough away that I cannot feel the echo of the spell.”  
  
Weasley tensed further. Lucius spent a moment feeling sorry for his wife, who had to share a bed with him when he lay awake at night and stared up at the ceiling, and then carefully directed his thoughts away from wives who had no reason to be proud of their husbands. “Could they have Apparated?” Weasley demanded. “If the attacker kidnapped them—“  
  
“We still sensed his use of hostile magic on Potter the other night,” Lucius felt compelled to point out. “I am sure he could not have forced them to come with him  _sans_  struggle. And that means that Severus and I would both sense the disruption of the wards.”  
  
Weasley opened his mouth as if he would argue about that, too, and then closed it and nodded curtly. “Could they have taken one of the Floos out?”  
  
“Likewise, I would have sensed them, and one of the house-elves is specially trained to come and warn me of the unauthorized use of Floo powder in my home.” Lucius tapped his first two fingers against his thumb. “I am afraid that it is by broomstick that they have left us. Draco has a rather powerful broom, a Clearstar.”  
  
Weasley leaned against the wall as though someone had hit him in the solar plexus. Lucius suffered a brief shiver of distaste. He hoped that neither he nor Draco were that open with their weaknesses. They could learn many things from the victors in the Second War concerning how to live in this changed world, but  _that_  was not a necessary skill.  
  
“And we have no idea what direction to go in, or where they are,” said Weasley. He straightened with a sigh. “I reckon I’ll have to tell Kingsley about this. And Hermione. Neither one will be pleased.”  
  
Lucius smiled. “Or we may turn to other methods to track them.”  
  
Weasley looked up, hope lighting his face like the trail of a comet the night sky. “You have something that’ll work?”  
  
Lucius waited until he judged that Weasley’s desperation had outweighed his inherent distrust of a Malfoy, then inclined his head and swept down the corridor. “Come with me.”   
  
Weasley’s eager footsteps told him he would have all the audience he could desire, and more than he had wanted.  
  
*  
  
Harry did not know how long they had stood there next to the illusion of Draco’s house, with Harry admiring and Draco watching him. He was perfectly content to remain for longer. Though the sun had gone down, the look on Draco’s face warmed Harry. There was a wild peace in his eyes, the most beautiful expression Harry had seen in long years.  
  
Then his stomach rumbled, and broke the calm.  
  
Harry flushed, but Draco chuckled—a sound so light Harry had never thought to hear it out of him—and waved his wand to banish the illusion of the house. Harry mourned its passing, but he understood why Draco had to take it down. Someone else might come past, see the house standing here, and steal his ideas. And Keller might be glad to pay a lesser amount for a design so beautiful.  
  
“I know a place we can eat.” Draco was holding out a hand towards him, his voice soft and his face edged with—Harry didn’t know what to call it, because the names his hope wanted to give that emotion were  _too_  soft. “I don’t go there often, and you’ll see why, but for your sake I’m minded to risk it.”  
  
“Draco, if it’s a place that will leave us vulnerable to the imposter’s attack—“ Harry began, alarmed. The last thing he wanted, given how much he cared for Draco, was for him to get hurt. The wound along his side twinged unpleasantly, but so what? He would willingly go through that for Draco.  
  
“It’s not.” Draco shook his head. “I doubt that more than a hundred wizards in Britain know it exists.”  
  
Harry blinked. “How does it make enough money to stay open, then?” Automatically, he accepted Draco’s hand, and let Draco steer him back to the Clearstar, which was already hovering obediently over the edge of the cliff. Harry felt a faint envy. If he still played Quidditch, he would have given a lot to own a broom like that.  
  
“Because it’s hideously expensive, of course.” Draco murmured the answer near his ear, and distracted Harry from worrying that Draco would spend too much money on him by tightening his arms around his waist. “How much do you trust me, Harry?”  
  
Harry’s mouth dried out. Draco was using his first name, and  _willingly_. Yes, something had changed between them, and he couldn’t give credence to Ron’s idea that Draco was only doing this out of some twisted revenge plot. Perhaps it was the way Harry had shown honest admiration for Draco’s craftsmanship. He must not be able to show his artistry to many people who would appreciate it. Lucius was mad and Snape too involved in his own research, his own brand of artistry.   
  
He leaned back and shut his eyes as he murmured, “More than is sensible.”  
  
Draco’s kiss brushed the corner of his mouth like a whip of fire, and then he backed up and flung Harry over the edge of the cliff.  
  
Harry couldn’t even describe the emotions with which he fell. His head was dizzy with them, his arms flapping in midair because of them, but they remained nameless. He was more conscious of the wind cutting through his fringe and stroking his flushed cheeks to coolness. And there was space beneath him and space above, and he fell reeling between the stars and the sea, and any moment Draco would catch him.  
  
He did. The Clearstar came up beneath Harry as if it had always been there, a part of the shore and the headland, and Draco’s arms took their place at his waist again. Harry leaned back against his chest and resumed the posture he’d been holding before they landed the first time. He knew he was smiling, and also knew he must look like an idiot, but he wasn’t about to open his eyes and confront the expression on Draco’s face yet.   
  
“You did very well, Harry.” Draco’s voice was low, and perhaps even impressed. He nuzzled his way into Harry’s hair, resting his cheek against Harry’s for a moment, and tapping Harry’s scar with his index finger. “Tell me, how did you know that I would catch you? I made an  _implicit_  promise that I would, but no explicit one.”  
  
“I know,” Harry sighed, and licked Draco’s jaw. They were close enough that he could aim with his eyes shut and still be fairly certain of guiding his tongue to the right target. From the way Draco gasped, he’d succeeded. “And the answer is that I trusted my own inclinations in your direction even more than I trust you. I knew what I wanted and I knew how much I wanted it to come true, and I couldn’t think that, if you were going to kill me, you would do something as simple as tossing me over a cliff.” Draco’s arms tightened on his waist, effectively saying,  _Yes, that’s true_. “Part of what I accept in you is what I want to accept in myself. I would be a lesser person if I didn’t trust you as much as I do.”  
  
Draco was silent for long moments, and they flew in circles until Harry thought Draco had given up his plan to take Harry to this restaurant, wherever it was. But then he crushed Harry with a ferocious embrace and leaned down to whisper hoarsely into his ear, “I don’t ever want anyone else to have you. I don’t want you to give that acceptance to anyone else.”  
  
“You don’t have to worry,” Harry breathed. “It’s wedded to you, and I couldn’t imagine giving it to anyone else.”  
  
Draco immediately urged the broom upwards, as though he half-regretted what he had said. But Harry knew it was the truth. He could feel it in the press of the arm against his waist and groin, and he pressed the heel of his hand hard into Draco’s forearm in answer.   
  
He wondered if he was touching the Dark Mark.  
  
*  
  
A drop of dragonfly blood.  
  
The drop fell, and the surface of the potion shuddered once and then lay smooth and quiescent. He bent closer to it, examining the blue color it had turned, noting with satisfaction that he could see light stabbing through the surface as he might through the surface of a shallow sea. The drop of blood had done its clarifying and purifying work.  
  
Crystallized drops of bicorn blood.  
  
This time, the potion rippled and a white bubble swelled up along the sides like a fungus. He dipped a silver spoon into it and broke the surface tension, twice. There was a ringing, bell-like sound, and the bubble disappeared.  
  
Scales from a night monarch’s wing, collected on a full moon night when the enormous black-purple butterflies visited the moonflowers he had planted in one of Lucius’s gardens for just such a purpose.  
  
The scales floated for long moments, longer than they naturally should have, before sinking and changing. Clear tornadoes formed in the middle of the potion, stirring up the tattered shreds of ingredients dropped in before them. He exhaled as two of the scales stuck to the sides of the cauldron, but he had judged the mixture accurately. They settled to the bottom of the cauldron in the next moment, and the others followed them down. The potion turned as dark as they were.  
  
He stepped back from the cauldron. He had to leave the potion to cool for five minutes now, and no more than that.  
  
As his mind rose out of the trance that complicated brewing always put it into, Severus recalled first his own name, and then the circumstances Lucius had communicated to him an hour ago—Potter and Draco missing from the house—and then the circumstances that had never been far from the forefront of his thoughts since he had read Potter’s mind.  
  
Severus felt the corner of his mouth crimp. Sometimes he had been sure that learning Legilimency had caused him more trouble than it had saved. At times like this, he was certain of it.   
  
Potter.  
  
The name was a well of loathing for Severus, and he had long since given up hope that it would ever be anything else. Sometimes he thought he could see a trace of his beloved Lily—  
  
( _Lily. His life had been a temple of mourning for her, and always would be_ ).  
  
\--in her son, but always it turned out to be a delusion of his own, or a possibly good trait tainted and sullied by his father. It was as if someone had told the boy how much he resembled his mother already and he had deliberately set out to cast every one of those resemblances into the rubbish bin.  
  
He was not a hero. He was an attention-seeker, someone who had received unfair advantage after unfair advantage, someone honored by the world when the world should have honored Severus Snape instead. It was true that Severus had made mistakes in his life, but he had atoned. Was that never to be taken into consideration? Was destroying a Dark Lord with a flare and flash of fire really so much more impressive than discovering new potions and carrying on the spy work that had made that destruction possible in the first place?  
  
Yes, it was, Severus knew, to his bitterness and his sorrow. The people whom the glamour of spying attracted were not the ones who could give him an Order of Merlin, and not those people whose good opinion he would wish to have in any case. And there were precious few who would listen to his tales with any graciousness or believe them. Even Lucius tolerated Severus’s presence in his home mostly as a favor to his son, and not because he believed that Severus had contributed to the war effort.  
  
The ghost of Narcissa hung between them—  
  
( _Narcissa. Perfect and pale. He honored her for the son she had borne, the most competent Potions student he had ever trained, but he could not honor her for her stupidity in the matter of her death. What did she think Bellatrix would do, driven by jealousy?)_  
  
\--and always would.   
  
And between him and Potter—  
  
Severus snarled. One hand flexed, the fingers digging into the edge of the table. He did not jolt the cauldron, because Potions masters who made such elementary mistakes did not live to make more. But he needed some outlet for his feelings, and with no one in the same room as him, he would indulge himself.  
  
He knew the truth about Potter, and Lily’s tainted legacy, and the boy who had pried into his Pensieve in his fifth year and inherited a life of sunlight from that, whilst Severus found himself condemned to the shadows still.  
  
But the mind he had read the other day was not the mind of someone who basked in the attention he had attracted undeserved. It was the mind of someone who flinched from it and clung to the shadows, someone whom Severus might have said would be glad to change places with  _him_ , save that that was so ridiculous he knew he must have misinterpreted the thoughts he read.  
  
But it  _was_  the mind of someone who carried an enormous lode of love for Draco Malfoy, close-packed and gleaming like buried gold.  
  
Severus did not know what to make of a Potter who could appreciate the grace and cleverness that was Draco. How could Lily’s son love Narcissa’s?  
  
A sharp chime sounded from the potion, and at once Severus lifted his head and plunged back into his work, leaving behind thought.  
  
A mouse’s head that had passed undigested through an owl’s body.  
  
*  
  
“This is  _blood_  magic.”  
  
“I do believe that you have said that more than once since we walked through this door, Mr. Weasley,” Lucius murmured, bending over the lens and frowning. It was a large, tilted piece of glass, convex and flashing with brilliant slashes of blue and green. A drop of his blood ran back and forth about the middle of it, swirling and darting in sudden slashes, but refused to do as it should and show him visions of the place where Draco and Potter were now. Lucius shook his head. The only answer was that Draco had protected himself against detection via this kind of blood magic, and that was something Lucius had thought he would not have the foresight for. “As it is not  _your_  blood, I do not see why complaints are needed.”  
  
A rustle of cloth and a deep huff showed that Weasley had crossed his arms. Lucius smiled absently and cut his arm again. A second drop of blood fell to join the first. Even if Draco  _had_  set up protections against this kind of detection, enough blood should manage to overpower it.   
  
The second drop of blood mingled with the first, and for a moment they touched like small animals bumping noses. Then they began to race around the center of the lens, and the blue and green flashes grew deeper and more brilliant in color. Lucius leaned nearer the lens, and heard Weasley drawing near on the other side. He was muttering under his breath, but stopped when he saw the behavior of the blood, perhaps because he really would do whatever he needed to in order to bring Potter back, perhaps in reluctant fascination.  
  
The blood circulated until Lucius felt a dizzy, throbbing headache break out behind his eyes. He clenched one hand down on the edge of the lens and hissed. Spiderweb cracks radiated through the glass, and Lucius leaned cautiously backwards, wondering if he should Vanish the second drop of blood. Too much power would—  
  
The lens flew apart into glittering shards, and Lucius barely put his arm over his eyes in time. The rain of glass made Weasley curse in a way that testified to his mother not using enough power behind the wooden spoon Lucius imagined she threatened her children with in private. Lucius waited until the tinkling noises had ceased, and then lowered his arm and stared at the hollow ring where the lens had been.   
  
“What the fuck happened?” Weasley demanded, waving his wand over his face to heal small wounds inflicted by the flying glass.  
  
Lucius shook his head, unable to respond. There were only two things that should have caused the glass to crack like that. Either Draco’s protection spell was mightier than the charm that tried to pierce it and had turned Lucius’s magic back on itself—  
  
Or the person Lucius was trying to find was not in this world.  
  
For a moment, a third possibility teased his mind, one that said something about it not being possible to locate twins using this spell, but the thought fled when Weasley’s impatient voice said, “Well, what are we going to try next?”  
  
*  
  
Potter was impressed, of course. Draco had been certain he would be, or he would not have risked bringing him to Avalon.  
  
Much more than a place to eat, this was a secret sanctuary for those pure-blood wizards who had not abandoned their traditions and sought to cringe with fear and awe before the Muggle world. Draco could feel himself relax as they passed inside the wards. Everything here would be done by magic, and that particular truth resonated within his muscles and bones.  
  
He and Potter had soared through a door in the air that looked like a normal shaft of moonlight, but in fact functioned as a combined Portkey and Apparition point, transferring them into a wide wizardspace. Or perhaps it  _was_  some impossibly beautiful place in the real world. Draco had never known, and the owners of Avalon were not about to tell.  
  
He lifted his head, blinking away the silvery afterimages, and heard Potter gasp. Draco smiled smugly. He blinked harder, because he wanted to get rid of the bloody afterimages soon in order to appreciate Potter’s expression.  
  
He had no need to look up, because he could see the reflection of their surroundings on Potter’s face. They were hovering above a wide expanse of dark purple sea, touched by pinpricks of silver stars that didn’t match any constellations Draco knew. A full moon hung low in the western sky. It was always full, no matter what the behavior of the moon in Britain. Its light spread a shimmering wake on the sea, which pointed like a path straight at an island.  
  
At first, as they flew towards the island, it appeared as a dark bulk of undifferentiated stone. Then they whirled around on a permanent wind current placed stationary to the east of the shore, and Potter gasped again. Draco looked down himself at that point. He hadn’t seen this sight often enough to get tired of it.  
  
As they turned majestically, purple and silver light elongated over the island, as if it were coming out of an eclipse. Some of the mass of rock revealed itself as slender silver towers, and other parts as spires of amethyst. Arched windows shone with complicated patterns of blue and green light in the towers, but there were no doors that Draco had ever seen. Chains and walkways too thin for any but trained acrobats to walk led from tower to tower. Branches of enormous trees twined about the walkways. So close did the trees stand to the spires, and so deep were the colors of their bark, that it was hard to tell which part of Avalon was grown from roots and which part from stone.  
  
Potter was panting now, as if he couldn’t get enough breath. Draco urged the Clearstar down with a whispered word and let Potter see into the heart of the island, as trees and towers parted around a central clearing designed to be visible to someone from flight. Draco wondered idly for a moment how it looked from other parts of the island, then dismissed the idea. The immense magic that had created Avalon would not find it difficult to arrange matters so that it blazed with beauty from every angle.  
  
Dark purple and silver roots gave way to dark green grass, a shallow bowl of it delving down in gentle slopes that made the clearing resemble a ring of ripples made from tossing a stone into water. White flowers crouched about the slopes to echo the stars in the sky above, and a long inlet of shallow water dominated the center of the clearing, reflecting a finger of moonlight. There was a smaller island in the exact middle of that inlet, complete with miniature towers and trees, which resolved themselves into a table and chairs as they hovered closer. Draco heard Potter sigh, and knew it for the moment when he discerned the mirroring effect.  
  
Phoenix song rose to greet them as they descended, and Draco shut his eyes in spite of himself as pure serenity breathed along his hair and into his face. There were no human servitors here, no house-elves. Everything was done by magic alone, enchantments layered and piled until they took on their own awareness from sheer density.   
  
Potter was whimpering now, and they hadn’t even landed and had anything to eat yet. Draco chuckled into his ear. He would feel Avalon’s magic calling out to the magic in him, and he would feel at home for the first time in his life. It was possible to feel a shadow of this sensation in Hogwarts or Hogsmeade, long-settled areas of wizarding Britain soaked in generations of practitioners, but neither of them had the  _presence_  that this place did. Muggles had walked in them perhaps a thousand years before. No Muggle had ever walked in Avalon.  
  
They landed, and Draco seated Potter carefully in a silver filigree chair before a table carved of a single large amethyst. Potter leaned back as a whirling cascade of moonlit motes darted past him, already forming into the food he would like to eat best and which would best match his internal mood and power—the magic, in tune with him now, needed no speech to understand that—and his expression was intense and open at the same moment, joyful and free.  
  
Draco sank more slowly into his own chair. His gaze clung to Potter’s face.  
  
 _I want to see him look that way, too, for as long as possible._  
  
Draco frowned a little. He did not understand  _that_  desire of his. It seemed to have less to do with revenge than his desire to maintain Potter’s admiration.  
  
But then Potter smiled at him, and Draco remembered that no one else had ever seen Potter look at him with those softly shining eyes. Rarity was reason enough to value it.


	17. Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

Harry had never been in such a daze.  
  
He had never wanted to wake up less.  
  
Before him appeared silver flagons of a thin, delicate wine that cooled his mouth and soothed his mind, seeming to condense out of the air and light, rather like the illusion of the Keller house Draco had created. They were joined by heavy pies of seasoned meat that made him close his eyes when he bit into them, as the spices swarmed through his throat one by one and burst in his nostrils and behind his eyes like tiny, brilliant bubbles. He followed them with whole roast birds, though what kind of birds he didn’t know; they had feathers of shining silver, replaced after they were cooked, and their flesh melted and dissolved at first, then struck the back of his tongue with heavy flavor. And there were plates of fruit, red berries that gleamed as if plucked straight from the bush and huge purple plums that Harry chewed through slowly, because so much sweetness must be countered by one hell of a stone.  
  
No hands but motes of magic served the meal, and phoenix song rose and fell in the background, alternating between low and high. More than once, Harry glanced up, expecting to see Fawkes heading towards them. He hadn’t seen the phoenix since Dumbledore’s death, but that didn’t change the nature of his expectation. This was a place in which anything might happen.  
  
Draco ate, too, but he spent most of the time sitting across from Harry and staring at him. The touch of his eyes was more pleasant than the taste of the wine. Harry found himself leaning back in his chair and arching his neck, turning his head slowly and deliberately from side to side, because he saw that made Draco’s expression hungrier and hungrier.  
  
Dancing shadows circled under the trees. Blue and green lights flared in the water and vanished, and sometimes they sat in darkness broken by nothing but the blaze of the moon and stars, and the tiny, silver flowers on the hills around them, which seemed to shed their own light. Harry shivered, overcome by the sheer  _presence_  of them.  
  
“This is part of what you fought to protect, isn’t it?” he asked Draco, almost timidly. His voice didn’t seem to fit with the hushed wonders of the place.  
  
Draco understood him at once, as only happened in Harry’s dreams. Still, this was a place of dreams, so why not? He reached out and smoothed his thumb over the back of Harry’s hand before answering, and Harry felt fire trail the touch. He closed his eyes and sought to breathe, heavy puffs of air breaking past his lips.   
  
“Yes,” Draco said at last. “Magic like this, places like this,  _beauty_  like this. I wouldn’t say that people like your friend Granger are less intelligent than pure-bloods, but they know less of beauty. How can they comprehend or appreciate a place like this?” Passion grew beneath the surface of his voice, and Harry felt a twinge. He could have wished to inspire passion in Draco in a different way right now. “It needs an acceptance of magic that can be laid in childhood alone.”  
  
“And yet, you brought me here.” Harry leaned forwards, sorry to disrupt the mood. But even if he was enchanted, literally, by the magic around him, he could not be enthralled by it. He could not abandon the defense of the friends who had saved his life again and again, the friends who had made him what he was. “What makes me so different from Hermione? I still carry the blood of a Muggleborn woman in my veins.”  
  
*  
  
Draco felt then as he had never felt before.  
  
The world around him hovered, pausing. The silver motes of magic darted to the sides and then ceased to move. The circling shadows beneath the trees dropped out of his sight. The tastes of the food became meaningless on his tongue. His vision narrowed to Harry Potter, staring at him with determined eyes, asking a question that could change everything depending on how he reacted to it.  
  
Draco looked at Potter’s lips, still glistening with the tomato-red sauce spread over one of the birds’ wings. He thought of the food he had gathered in his room beneath the Manor, the place where he kept the relics of Potter that would bear witness to his eventual triumph. He had kept the food, and the portrait, and the things Potter had touched, and mementos of the places he had been, because he had thought they would content him, in some manner, for not defeating Potter yet.  
  
Now he knew they never could have, because this was the moment of his revenge.  
  
He had only to subdue his natural inclinations for a moment, since those inclinations were to snap out the difference that Potter’s celebrity and magical power created between him and Granger, and then the moment would be  _past_ , and Potter would be  _his._  
  
He lowered his eyelids and took a deep breath. He heard Potter’s own breathing quicken, and wanted to smile. So many people took the lowering of eyelids for the lowering of eyes, and thought the gesture meant that Draco was going to act demure.  
  
“I had not thought--” he whispered. He shook his head. He had to make a token protest, or else Potter would suspect something was wrong, but he had to show that his own principles were going down fighting before a superior force. He coaxed himself to blush, and reached helplessly across the table to take Potter’s hand again. Potter clasped it and held on tightly, gazing into his face.  
  
“What is it, Draco?” he whispered. “What are you thinking?”  
  
“That there are not such differences as I thought, between me and someone like Granger.” Draco was grateful for his long practice in lying, so that the words slipped out of his throat without catching and choking him. “I didn’t think twice about bringing you here. What’s important to me with you is the personal connection, not blood status.”  
  
He caught a glimpse of Potter’s face from under his lowered eyelids. A glimpse was enough. The idiot was devouring this more eagerly than he’d eaten the pies.  
  
“I never thought anything would be so important,” Draco said. It was as if he had taken his mind away from behind his eyes and the words were spilling from his lips thanks to the person who now possessed him. He tugged on Potter’s hands, pulling him across the table. The flagons and plates that had been in the way had already vanished in a whirl of moonlit dust, as the magic of Avalon sensed what they wanted and responded accordingly. “I never thought someone like you could break the walls I built around myself and make me--more than I am. I  _am_  more, you know, when I’m with you. New thoughts rush through my head. New desires plague me.”  
  
“They don’t have to plague you,” Potter said, and his lips were open, his eyes mostly shut, and filled with drowning black, as his pupils dilated. Draco took a moment to wonder at how easily it was for this hero to surrender to him, when he hadn’t surrendered to Voldemort, a far more overwhelming presence, and then he bowed his head and pressed his lips to Potter’s.  
  
His doom came out of that mouth and claimed him.  
  
*  
  
Harry gasped and slung an arm around Draco’s neck. The pressure of his mouth was far greater than it had been the last time they kissed, and that had been great enough to bring the blood from his wound. But  _this_ …  
  
This made Harry’s teeth cut into his lips. It drove his tongue backwards until he thought he might choke on it as if he were having a seizure. It filled his mouth with thick splendor, and muffled his gasps until he wondered if Draco would think him passionate at all, so thoroughly were his noises stifled.  
  
But when he opened his eyes fully enough to gaze into Draco’s face, he found that Draco wasn’t about to notice anything out of the ordinary. His eyes had slammed shut, and he looked as if he were in pain.  
  
 _I never want him to be in pain_ , Harry thought, as he planted a knee on the table and shifted his position so that he could kiss Draco more strongly.  _I want to protect him, to shelter him, to lend him my strength and guard him._  
  
The realization made the starry sky that had swollen around them as they fell on the broom seem to expand behind his eyes in turn.  
  
 _This isn’t temporary. I don’t want Kingsley to pull me off this assignment and force me never to see him again. My strength to protect him, my body to shield him. I want that, for ever and always.  
  
Even if he doesn’t feel the same way._  
  
It was wonderfully freeing, in a way, the epiphany of how powerful his own desire was. He wanted this no matter what Draco wanted, which meant he was unconstrained by the selfish nature Ron had warned him about, if it even existed. Harry kissed and kissed and felt as if he could laugh and yell aloud with the world of possibilities that had suddenly opened for him. Draco made him more  _himself_  with this kiss, whether or not that was what he had intended.  
  
That was how Harry knew he had fallen in love.  
  
*  
  
Draco was trembling all over, and he could not figure out why.  
  
He bore Potter to the grass, not to the table; despite the decadence which taking Potter on the table would have implied, and which appealed to him deeply, it wasn’t stable enough for him to be sure that he could maintain his dignity whilst they had sex. And dignity was all-important. It was the thing that would save him when Potter looked at him with soft eyes and assumed he had bound Draco to him as he was bound to Draco.  
  
But Draco Malfoy did the claiming. He was not claimed. He was a creature of sharp edges, of ice and darkness. And the more fool Harry Potter that he should lie on the soft, warm grass of Avalon, a place where pure-blood wizards had come for centuries to celebrate their triumphs, and think he had conquered.   
  
He undressed Potter, of course. No use letting him think that he had enough initiative to do even that. And wounds he had waited years to heal healed now, as he swept his fingers over the crooks of Potter’s elbows, over the bumps of his shoulders, down the ridges of his spine. Potter lay beneath him, eyes shining until his face resembled a star or a silver flower, and played with Draco’s hair, stroked his cheeks, traced the line of his jaw. Draco caught himself enjoying it with eyes shut, and shook his head, opening them. No, it would not do, either, to make Potter think he could be seduced, when in fact he was the one in control here.  
  
 _Yet I feel so strangely out of control_ , he told himself as he gazed down at Potter, who had risen on one elbow now and was playing with the buttons of Draco’s robes. Potter’s own clothes were cast off to the side, not folded and not even folded beneath them, because the grass of Avalon was soft enough. Draco’s throat burned as if he had been running for miles through snow. His eyes stung hard around the edges, as if someone were forcing needles beneath the lids. His mouth was dry and he licked his lips repeatedly, but he was not thirsty.  
  
Except perhaps for a taste of Potter’s mouth, as he found when he lay down on top of him and pressed his lips to Potter’s again.  
  
Potter accepted it for only a moment this time, and ignored Draco’s sharp shift of displeasure as he pushed himself away, laughing. “You need these off,” he said, and tugged Draco’s robes from his shoulders; when had he opened them? “You don’t want to ruin them if you come in them.”  
  
Draco could have told him that most of the time he  _did_  make his lovers orgasm whilst he himself was clothed, more than once, and then undressed himself and took his pleasure from their limp and sated bodies. But Potter was too delicate in both his emotions and his understanding. He would react badly if Draco drove him too far now. So Draco reared back on his knees to remove the robes and the white shirt he wore beneath them, followed by his boots, trousers, and pants.  
  
And Potter gaped at him.  
  
Draco turned his head to the side, preening, letting his hair fall along the line of his jaw in a way that he knew made him look even more handsome than he really was. Potter promptly reached up and gathered a handful of hair.  
  
“I can hardly believe you,” he whispered. “It’s as if you’re a dream that I had one morning and I woke to find you real. That’s how hard it is to think you’re not just a creation of my own mind.” He shook his head, as though he had realized how much like babble his words had sounded, and drew Draco down to kiss him.  
  
Draco allowed that for only a few seconds. Potter did not control things around here. It was time he learned that. He drew his wand, pulled his head back from the kiss, and cast a modified  _Incarcerous._  Ropes snaked around Potter’s wrists and drew them over his head, binding them to a convenient rock that of course was where Draco needed it to be, thanks to the magic of Avalon.  
  
Potter arched his back as though Draco had just stroked his cock, and, for the first time, really drew Draco’s eyes to his naked skin. It was--fine, Draco thought grudgingly. More tanned than he usually preferred, but then, most of his lovers had been pure-bloods like himself, with no need to work a job and a high aversion to physical labor. His muscles were more than fine, and Draco reached out and touched one of his nipples before he realized what he was doing. He usually did more talking before he condescended to touch his lovers.  
  
“Oh,  _yes_ ,” Potter said, his voice so low that Draco almost couldn’t hear him. He wriggled his hands in their bonds, and nodded in satisfaction when the knots tightened around his wrists. He tilted his head back, and Draco’s heart gave one enormous beat when he saw the fire glimmering in his green eyes. “Take me, Draco.”  
  
Draco hesitated for a long moment. He had planned to taunt Potter with his helplessness, anger him, and then melt him until he was gasping and begging in spite of himself. He would not obey  _Potter’s_  commands. But Potter was demanding exactly what Draco wished to do.  
  
Potter stared at him and opened his mouth. Draco thought he would laugh. But instead he breathed, a gust of hot air, scented with the meat and wine he’d drunk, that struck Draco right in the face.  
  
Draco leaned down and kissed him, all sense and all thought gone.  
  
*  
  
It was the most intense lovemaking Harry had ever experienced.  
  
He’d been with sweeter people--especially thoughtful Amanda, his second lover after his sexual orientation had been announced to the press, who laughed at him and with him and taught him not to be afraid of his own desires. He’d been with people who spent a longer time arousing him, and who made love with their eyes on his face, as if to miss one of his expressions would be to commit blasphemy.  
  
But Harry had never been sure how much of that came from affection for him and how much came from their gathering material on the Savior of the Wizarding World that they later sold to the papers. Draco, he knew, at least was obsessed with him for himself; it was the history Harry had shared with him that mattered, not the fact, or not the fact alone, that Harry had defeated Voldemort.  
  
Harry could almost hear Ron whispering that he was making excuses for the bastard.  
  
But Harry didn’t care. Didn’t Ron make excuses for Hermione, apologizing to the people she offended with her brusqueness but also defending her investment in her studies? Didn’t everyone make excuses for the people they loved?  
  
And he loved Draco.  
  
The mouth on his neck, keen teeth cutting his skin, a sharp tongue soaking up the blood from the mark…Harry arched his head back and tilted it to the side to try and pin Draco to the spot with his chin, since his hands were bound.  
  
The press of Draco’s knee between his legs, glimmering as a part of the pale wash of skin in the dusky green and purple night, the rocking motion as relentless as the pace of the sea…Harry clasped his thighs about Draco’s and thrust against him, his cock rustling and his blood aching.   
  
The mouth fastened about his cock, sucking and then retreating, never letting him fall over the edge but reclaiming his interest each time he might have been driven to distraction with a darting lick…Harry wept at last with the pleasure of it, tears of fury and frustration, and then Draco swallowed around him and he almost came, but cruel fingers pinched about his erection and held back his orgasm.  
  
He was panting by the time Draco eased one finger into him, and then that thrust in and out until Harry howled with impatience. Draco laughed and said, “Patience, Harry. I count a hundred between the introduction of each finger.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and thought he would die.  
  
Somehow it passed, the count of three hundred. Draco pushed into him, not easing as he had the fingers, his breath harsh as a dying man’s by the time he was seated. Harry flung his head back again and felt the cushion of grass beneath his hair, and pictured the starry sky and the moon wheeling around the island in the center of the ocean, which in turn wheeled around this flower-starred, moonlit island in the center of the inlet, until images multiplied and expanded in his head and he felt that he lay at the center of the universe.  
  
Draco’s hips drove forwards with sharp snaps. The thumps of his hips, and of Harry’s arse as it hit the grass again and again from the pace, grew rhythmic. The phoenix song dipped and turned husky and urgent, matching them as they rose towards their climaxes.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. The purple and the green followed him behind his eyelids, blooming and opening, and he fell into darkness and fireworks as his orgasm started to tear through his body.  
  
Draco caught his breath, and his movements became ragged. Harry forced his eyes open in time to see his expression change, becoming fearful, full of wonder. He bent forwards, his hands, which had rested so far on his own hips as if to guide them the more in the plundering of Harry’s arse, fluttering forwards, resting on Harry’s hips as if he needed the support.  
  
“What--” he panted. “What--” Harry had the impression he wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the breath to finish the sentence.  
  
He sagged as he came, and the warm rush made Harry’s muscles tighten and pushed him into freefall at last. He felt his wrists chafing as he yanked at his bonds. That didn’t usually happen, but so intense was his orgasm that he felt the need to move, to reach down and touch himself, and of course that couldn’t happen when his hands were held helpless.  
  
But if anyone was helpless at the moment, Harry thought it was Draco. His hair hung disheveled around his head, and he just kept staring at Harry, his eyes flickering between Harry’s face and his arse, as though somewhere on his body he would find the answer as to why he was affected like this.  
  
Harry offered him a sleepy smile. Draco was shaking like a butterfly new-come from the cocoon, and Harry understood why.  
  
He had fallen in love with a Draco partially of his own creation; he understood that. He saw the  _potential_  in Draco for more, for stronger emotional commitment and for translating his talent at art into a talent for dealing with human beings. He knew how to do it; that much was there in the way he spoke with Keller. Now he needed to reach beyond the closed-in world of pure-blood wizards and learn to relate to others. Now he was coming to know his own ability to expand his soul and send his thoughts flowing into the heads of others so as to mingle with their minds.  
  
He could be so much more than he was. He could be the high and haughty pure-blood aristocrat  _and_  the genius that his talent implied, the disdainful man who had kept the  _Daily Prophet_  from writing degrading stories about his life since the war with pure temper alone  _and_ the lover who relaxed his guard inside carefully-protected walls. Harry saw the Draco he could be lingering like a shadow behind his gestures, like an aura around his head and his lips and his eyes.  
  
From the shattered expression in Draco’s eyes, he had seen the wall separating him from his newborn self break for the first time. Harry was willing to wait for him to recover from that. Hands still tied above his head, he pressed his lips against Draco’s throat and closed his eyes.  
  
*  
  
Draco closed his eyes and held Potter tightly--he had called him Harry, hadn’t he, during the fucking?--and waited for his heart to stop beating as wildly as it was.  
  
It did not stop. Instead, the pace increased until he was sure Potter could see the skin of his chest quivering if he looked down.  
  
This was--  
  
This was unacceptable.  
  
What he had felt during the sex was unacceptable.  
  
He had never fallen that deeply into another person before. Normally, he held off the other’s orgasm until he had climaxed, then tormented and teased until they were driven to the point of begging. It was the best way to make sure he had won the encounter.  
  
This time, he had not. They had achieved mutual triumph, or mutual defeat. From the sated smile on Potter’s face, and the way he shifted as if the welts opening on his wrists were something to be proud of instead of a sign of weakness, he thought it was triumph.  
  
The action Draco had planned as the first step in his destruction, by making him see how deeply he had surrendered himself to Draco and how dependent he was on Draco’s continuing good will for mental and emotional survival, had somehow turned like an asp and stung him.  
  
Draco shut his eyes because he had to; it was better to show Potter a small sign of emotion than reveal all the specific emotions in his gaze. He lay still, panting, and then sank his hands into the grass around them and gave a sharp yank. Potter gave a soft laugh, as if he imagined the violent gesture were some sort of tribute to him.  
  
The laugh rushed a revelation towards Draco, and for a moment he saw what would happen if he accepted the conflict in the way Potter had, saw what he might become, saw how he might change--  
  
 _No!_  
  
Ominous clangs erupted in his head. His thoughts snarled at him. If he turned his back on Potter, if he betrayed him, then he would regret it. The fall he had planned would be his fall. Potter’s defeat would spread to encompass him and swallow him as fully as the abyss that spanned the other side of Avalon would, if he fell into it.  
  
But the alternative to that betrayal was the soft future he could feel spreading in front of him, the change he would have to make in his ideals and his behavior, because he would have to stay with Potter, and Potter would demand no less.  
  
Caught between a loss of honor and dignity, and a loss of all he was, Draco twisted on the grass, feeling as though a hook had stabbed deep into his guts, and Potter lay beside him, face limp with pleasure.  
  
There was only one decision he could make, of course, and towards morning he made it.


	18. These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

Harry woke alone.  
  
He opened his eyes slowly, wincing from the unexpected stab of a beam of moonlight straight into his face. Then he turned his head from side to side, and found the grass beside him empty, the grass beneath his feet empty, and the chairs at the table empty. His hands were still bound above his head.  
  
Harry half-shut his eyes again and forced himself not to react with the panic and loneliness that wanted to surge through his veins. He was a trained Auror, and he had been in worse situations than this. Besides, he had not forgotten the way the magic had brought him what he wanted last night (or early this morning; he had lost all track of time with the motionless moon and stars overhead). He concentrated, and a shower of silver dust fell on his bonds and weakened them, letting him sit up.  
  
His wrists tingled fiercely, and for long moments Harry concentrated on rubbing them and didn’t think about anything else. Then he stood with a small shake of his head and staggered back towards the table. His limbs were stiff as they always were when he spent the night on the ground. He’d been asleep for some hours then, at least. He knew that much.  
  
And then he smiled as he remembered that he could solve one problem, at least. He pressed his palms flat against his knees and willed magic into them. The aches in his muscles flowed out and into the ground like water. Harry tilted his head back with a sigh and clasped his hands above his neck, stretching them and flexing his fingers. He could feel the last of the pain leave him.  
  
The pain in his body, at least.  
  
Had Draco abandoned him here? Why? Looking about, Harry could see no sign of him or the Clearstar broom, and any depression his body might have made at rest in the grass was long gone. Harry reached out, and a flagon of fresh water appeared on the table to his desire and his hand. He sipped, slowly, whilst he considered what had happened.  
  
Draco could have left for no common reason. On the other hand, considering the isolation of this place from the rest of the wizarding world, Harry doubted he could have received word from his father. And leaving Harry—who was his bodyguard—behind made no sense if he’d been attacked by the imposter. Neither did not leaving word make sense.  
  
So the best guess was that he’d been frightened by something that had happened during the lovemaking last night. Harry emptied the flagon and nodded with some determination, then sat down in front of a slice of thick white cheese that had appeared in the middle of the table. The phoenix song was rising again, though more subdued than he had heard it last night.  
  
And that left the question of what that thing had been—a question Harry didn’t think he could answer yet—and how he was going to leave.  
  
The phoenix song adopted an urgent tone, quivering in his ears like a harpstring, and a swift glow of purple light formed around him. Harry smiled slowly, holding back the emotions that wanted to crash over him with the sheer pressure of his own mind, and spread his arms out, cocking them like a bird’s wings.  
  
In moments he had risen from the ground and hovered above the table, the magic obeying his unspoken wish that he not go higher for now.   
  
 _Did Draco know about this? That he didn’t need a broom to come here?_  
  
Harry doubted it. Otherwise, he surely would have brought Harry down this way, to impress him the more and enslave him with—what? What did Draco imagine Harry needed that he had not already given to him?   
  
For a moment, the image of what might have been stained Harry’s mind. He pictured himself and Draco swooping down hand in hand, their gazes touching as much as their fingers, their eyes then returning to the island below. Yes, Draco would have brought him that way, if he’d had any notion of it.  
  
But he hadn’t.  
  
Harry rose higher and higher, his body swaying slightly, his lonely gaze now taking in the island, the table, the chairs, the inlet of moonlit water around the table, the peace in which he and Draco had dined. Yes, this was a wondrous place, and he never would have known it existed if not for Draco. He wondered if he could understand Draco a little better if he thought of his soul as contained in the beauty here. Had he borrowed from it, or from his understanding of it, to shape the beauty that was his houses?  
  
But such thoughts could not push back the emotions for long. Harry thought of Draco’s potential, of the choices he could make, and of what might have happened if he had come to such an important crossroads alone.  
  
He could not think on it. The implications were too large, too demanding.  
  
He rose further into the air, magic and warm wind alike caressing him, and a silvery tear opened in the sky ahead of him, taking him where he wanted to go.   
  
*  
  
Draco leaned back and closed his eyes. In front of him stood a post owl, carefully nibbling on the piece of bread he had offered it from his own plate, and beside it lay a rustling paper that he feared as much as he had feared the letter from the first patron who hired him as an architect.  
  
Bitterness twisted within him, and he could not even say whom it was directed against. That was the first time  _that_  had happened, too, in many years.  
  
But he had made the only decision he could have, and the shock of doing so would pass in time.   
  
Draco rose and opened his eyes. He wanted to visit his room beneath the Manor, the one that contained the relics of Potter and had taught him what Potter would look like in defeat. He would soon have the chance to compare the expression on the face of the portrait to the expression on the face of the real one.  
  
*  
  
Harry appeared outside the door of his flat and spent a moment leaning against it before he removed its wards. His back prickled and emotions rasped up and down his throat like waves of tears that could not be shed. His mind reeled towards comprehending what Draco _might_  have done, the enormity and the breadth of it, and then turned away again, shuddering.  
  
For a moment his hand dug into the door, and then Harry drew it carefully back before he could gather splinters under his nails. He really had no proof. Draco  _might_ , after all, have heard something from his father or Snape, and Harry knew he cared for Snape if not for Lucius. Harry could manipulate the magic of that place, but he was not a pure-blood, and there might still be hidden channels of communication in it that required knowledge as well as will to use.  
  
Until he knew why Draco had left, he would not think the worse.  
  
But on the other hand, he could not bring himself to go back to Malfoy Manor. Not yet. Ron was there, and he could serve as a guard to Draco, and, for that matter, to anyone else in the house if someone had happened. He was not as good with spells as Harry, but that would matter little against someone as skilled with magic as the imposter was. And he would protect the Malfoys or Snape until he died, no matter how much he might hate them. Harry knew Ron’s heart and how he’d grown in the past few years. Revenge was no longer as important to him as protecting the innocent.  
  
He stepped towards the perch he kept for visiting owls and noticed there was already one there, plucking scraps of meat with a Preserving Charm on them out of the bowl at the end of the perch and bolting them. Harry reached out a hand. It trembled. He drew it back and breathed carefully until he could pick up the folded bundle the owl had brought him without dreaming that it contained news of Draco’s death.  
  
But it was not a letter. It was the  _Daily Prophet_ , which Harry had not read in some weeks, thanks to their preoccupation with talking about Penelope and the sordid facts she’d carried from their shared bed to Rita Skeeter’s eager ears. Harry wondered for a moment why the owl had delivered it now. Sometimes, in the past, he’d taken the paper again when he could be reasonably certain that people had lost interest in the scandal, but he couldn’t remember leaving those orders this time.  
  
And then he saw the headline, and he stood very still. For a moment, a whirlwind of black and red devoured his vision, but it passed, and he saw the headline again, and the picture beneath it, pale and sharp-featured and fair.  
  
 ** _BOY HERO ‘A GENTLE, TREMBLING FLOWER’ IN BED:  
Draco Malfoy Reveals All_**  
  
Harry looked again at the photograph. It showed Draco tossing back his head and laughing, his head framed against a square, sunlit window. It must have been taken this morning, Harry thought; this was the evening edition of the  _Prophet_ , now that he thought to check. Draco had left him on the grass and gone straight to—yes, Skeeter’s byline was on the article.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. The whirlwind had not come to him again, but now he swayed on his feet as if he’d skipped two meals. The water he’d drunk earlier threatened his throat and mouth in a molten, bitter mass for a moment. Then he staggered forwards and put his back to the wall, fingers putting dents in the page as he read.  
  
 _It was with considerable pleasure that I sat down with Draco Malfoy this morning. This supremely talented architect, survivor of the war against You-Know-Who, and half-orphan, following the tragic loss of his beloved mother and his father’s retreat from the world, now has another distinction, one that he’s eager to explain and exploit.  
  
“I never really expected to lie down with Harry Potter,” he told me, drinking a delicate white wine that filled the room with sweetness. “I certainly never expected to lie down with him_  underneath  _me.”  
  
“Then he prefers the submissive posture?” This was a detail I have pursued for long and patient years, as my dear readers will know, but in vain. His first lover would speak only coyly, and his lovers willing to be truthful since then have mostly been women.  
  
“Prefers it?” Mr. Malfoy laughed and put down his glass. I was glad to see him in such fine spirits. He deserves it, after everything he has survived. “It’s necessary to him. I bound his hands, and he moaned. Then he thrashed when I started removing his clothes.” He leaned forwards, and I knew I was about to be the recipient of a great confidence, as I was just a few moments later. “You should have seen his eyes. Eyelids trembling, neck strained back, hair tousled around his head—but the most unforgivable thing was his eyes. I could see passion and desire and fear rushing through them, and I truly believe he would have wet himself if I walked away then. Who knew the Chosen One was a gentle, trembling flower in bed?” He shook his head in wonder and reached for his wineglass again._  
  
Harry licked his lips. His throat was so dry, and there was a heavy, dark buzzing in his ears. He relaxed the grip of his fingers, which threatened to tear the paper before he could read the article fully, and continued. He couldn’t have looked away if Draco had walked through the door at that moment, apologizing.  
  
 _“Unforgivable? That seems an odd word to use.”  
  
Mr. Malfoy snorted and again set the wineglass down. I would have thought him nervous, but I could imagine what work those hands had had, to coax and settle a nervous hero, and I could not blame him. “Of course it is, but Harry Potter is an odd person. A hero—and I have to admit that he played the part as well as anyone could have.” An unusual bitterness twisted beneath the surface of his voice, but I believe I can reveal its source to my loyal friends. He was thinking of his mentor, Severus Snape, who was a hero during the war by some accounts that might be trusted, but has never been honored for it as he deserves, in spite of my arguments to the contrary. “But underneath, he’s so soft. So easily breakable. And he never seems to realize that baring that weakness could get him in trouble. He has to guard himself, given his celebrity. But he doesn’t.” He snorted and then gave me a lascivious grin. “Look at the way he tumbled into bed with me.”_  
  
Brightness. The haze Harry was seeing the article’s words through was as bright as the sun.  
  
 _“Would you care to give me some details of what Harry Potter’s like in bed, other than gentle and trembling and willing to have his hands bound?”  
  
“He likes to have the skin behind his ear bitten.” Mr. Malfoy winked at me. “Of course, I don’t know if anyone else will ever get close enough to him to try that after he sees this article, so let’s see what else I can tell you.”  
  
I hastened to reassure him that of course Mr. Potter would have to understand and become reconciled with him. The natural curiosity of the public about its heroes’ sex lives has to be taken into account.  
  
Mr. Malfoy chuckled softly and toyed with the stem of the wineglass. I feel sorry for everyone who has not seen him as I saw him in that moment, gazing moodily out the window in my office. There is something indefinable about those eyes, silver as mist on a February morning, and his hair shines quite nicely, too.  
  
“He also likes being endangered, as well as bound,” Mr. Malfoy said then. “He let me close to him when he had to have some suspicion of me because of our legendary rivalry in school. He let me do things that could have caused him pain, even if they didn’t. It appears that he’s just panting to roll over and let someone else take control.” He paused and pinned me with a bright gaze. “Imagine what might happen among Britain’s criminals if they know that they only have to threaten_  him,  _instead of the innocents he goes mad with protecting, and he’ll melt like ice to their touch.”_  
  
Harry blinked. There was something light and wet on his cheek, and he lifted a hand to touch it, but that caused the side of the paper to dip, and he couldn’t read the words on the level anymore. He had to pick it up again, and let the wet thing trickle down his cheek unnoticed.  
  
 _I murmured that it was certainly very shocking, and what else could he tell us about the way the Chosen One liked it in bed?  
  
“Rough,” said Mr. Malfoy. He licked his lips, and I could only envy the pleasures he was reliving. “For all that he also appreciates gentleness, and you’d need a little of it to melt him. I was pounding him so hard that our skin squeaked, and still he kept tossing his head and gasping and begging me for more.” He paused thoughtfully. “He might, for that matter, melt if you pushed him into the wall, whether or not you’d threatened him beforehand.”  
  
I laughed. “That’s certainly a delightful thing to imagine. I don’t think there’s a wizard or witch in Britain who hasn’t dreamed about shagging our hero.”  
  
Mr. Malfoy’s tryst with Mr. Potter must have been wonderful indeed, because for a moment I caught a glimpse of an emotion I would have called jealousy on anyone less gracious in his eyes. But he shook his head, and it was gone in the next instant. I am confident it could not have been real. Mr. Malfoy is freely sharing information about Mr. Potter’s favors with the world, after all, instead of keeping them in the privacy of his head or their bed.  
  
“He likes to be touched on the spine,” said Mr. Malfoy. “On the shoulders. On the stomach. His breathing would deepen and quicken when I merely brushed him there. For that matter, he would inhale sharply when I touched the back of his hand.” He flashed a smile, bright and malicious and utterly charming. “Can’t you imagine what must have happened to cause him to be that touch-starved? I’ve heard his Muggle guardians didn’t treat him well. And he must bear the marks of those scars on his soul.” He uttered a wistful little sigh. “If I had been able to touch it and mark it in the same way, then I would have counted myself well-satisfied.”  
  
And more than this he revealed, much more. But, my dear readers, you must wait until tomorrow to read the rest of it. A lady never tells all at once!_  
  
Harry folded the paper and laid it down—or tried. He’d moved away from the table in the entrance without realizing it, and so the  _Prophet_  dropped limply to the floor. Harry breathed noisily through his mouth for a moment, looking out the window at the gathering light of sunset. He felt emotions battering at him, tearing at the walls he’d built up against the realization that Malfoy was anything other than what he seemed, what Harry had wanted him to be.  
  
 _Ron was right. He did have revenge in mind, and obviously, this was his way of taking it._  
  
Harry laughed wildly for a moment, until he clapped a hand over his mouth. He bit the center of his palm, savagely, several times, and began to struggle against the selfishness that wanted to drown him.  
  
He couldn’t just feel what had happened to him, horrible though it was to realize that the scandal would be dragged across the front pages for days and days. He had to feel what had made Malfoy do this, what had made him disobey and deny the potential Harry sensed so deeply embedded in him.  
  
The wave of emotions broke upon him, and Harry realized it was pity for Malfoy, an ocean’s worth of it.  
  
 _He was trying to destroy me. He put too much effort into this for it to be a simple revenge plot, and he was too obviously pleased that I was infatuated with him. So, yes, he probably hoped I would crumple to the floor and sob my heart out, then lock my bedroom door and refuse to come out for months. He probably hoped I would never love again, or something equally as nonsensical and melodramatic._  
  
Harry began to smile. He had the feeling that the smile would look rather distended if he confronted it in a mirror, but he had no mirror in front of him right now, and the thought tearing through him was desperately sorrowful, desperately pitying, desperately proud.  
  
 _He doesn’t know me very well, does he?_  
  
Harry lifted his wand in the air and cast the spell that would summon one of the many available post owls in London. Then he turned to find the things he needed.  
  
Ink. Parchment. A quill.  
  
Words.  
  
*  
  
“You’ll be having company soon,” Draco told the portrait of Harry that hung in the center of his relics room, and drained the glass of wine he held. “I imagine that he’ll send me a Howler for my betrayal, as he sees it, and I’ll save that with all the rest. The final mark of his broken heart.” He paused thoughtfully. “Or maybe not the last. I might take a few photographs of him trailing about the city with his head bowed and put those in here to join you.”  
  
The portrait lashed him with a look of loathing that would have made Draco afraid, if he were one of those superstitious fools who believed painted people could leave their frames and enter the real world. The painted Potter bowed his head and wrapped his hands around his eyes and mouth.  
  
“You’ll see,” Draco said. “It’ll be glorious. You’ll see.”  
  
He set his wineglass down abruptly and stood to pace about the room. Harry’s Howler was taking far too long. Surely he could not have spent that much time asleep in Avalon.   
  
Draco stopped pacing and drew a deep breath. He didn’t like the way he was reacting. He didn’t like the hollow sound in his words when he spoke to the portrait, as if he were trying to convince himself. Even the interview he had given to Skeeter sounded less pleasant in his memory than it had been when he gave it.  
  
But he could not question his revenge. He had made the only possible choice he could. He could not sacrifice himself, all of himself, for  _anyone,_  let alone  _Potter._  
  
Then the soft swish of an owl’s wings announced a visitor. Draco raised his head, grinning, and trying to ignore the uncomfortable edges that the smile carved his mouth into. He had relaxed the wards enough that owl post could find him here in this room, just for the afternoon. It was not as though the bird would report anything to anyone.  
  
The envelope it carried was plain, though, without a trace of the red color and smoking trail that a Howler would leave. Draco raised an eyebrow as the owl dropped the letter over his head and he caught it handily. Perhaps Harry had sent him a broken-hearted missive telling him he understood and begging Draco to take him back. That would be even better.  
  
Draco nearly tore the single sheet of parchment inside in his haste to get the letter open. He paused and forced himself to count to fifty—though he cheated, and did it by fives—before he began to read.  
  
 _Draco:  
  
You thought that this would destroy me? How stupid of you. I’ve had lovers go to the papers before, and I’ve always survived it. Not only is your revenge pathetic, it’s not even_  original.   
  
 _I have to thank you, though, for breaking your hold on me the one way you could: through disappointing me. You haven’t betrayed me, not really. You’ve betrayed all that’s best in you, your own compassion and honor and pride and dignity. And having done that, you have nothing left. You might imagine you’ll go on to a new phase of your life now, one where I don’t trouble you, but in reality you’ll always be doubling back and licking your revenge and whining like a lapdog sucking an old nappy._  
  
I _’m wounded, but I’ll heal. You’re hollowed-out, and you won’t. Everything you gave me was given unwillingly, making the best of a bad bargain. Everything I showed you was a gift._  
  
 _I’m sorry for you, Draco, really. It must hurt to know that you’ve thrown away the best thing in your life. With all that’s befallen me, I’ve never done that._  
  
 _Harry Potter (I still am that, with all that you did to make me yours)._  
  
And the world changed for Draco as inevitably and suddenly as though the walls of his room had fallen in on his head.


	19. If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge?

The figure of Potter cowered in the corner of the photograph as Draco’s Cutting Curse approached him. He gave Draco one pitiful glance, desperate, his lips moving in small silent pleas, before the curse sliced the picture apart, and him with it.  
  
Draco drew a deep, satisfied breath, and then felt the anger crash into him again. No matter how many pictures might look like that, the real Potter never would.   
  
And the taunting words of his letter rang in Draco’s head again:  _You thought that this would destroy me? How stupid of you._  
  
Screaming, Draco whirled around and aimed a curse at a case of food and scraps of clothing on the far side of the room. It also contained a table from a restaurant that Potter had once frequented before money troubles forced it to close. Draco had appeared on the day of the sale and requested that they sell him the table Potter spent most of his time sitting at and staring out the window from. The owner had done it gladly, never once suspecting that he was looking at the man who had engineered the collapse of his restaurant through a few successful bribes. Draco could not bear the thought that something giving Potter so much pleasure as a favorite restaurant should exist.  
  
The table flew apart into splinters, tossed aside from one another as if flung by the hand of an angry god. Draco snarled, showing his teeth and not caring that he did so.  _That revenge was my finest. Original, not pathetic—_  
  
 _If that revenge was your finest hour_ , snarled the voice in his head that had Potter’s face and his own bitterness,  _what was the moment when you went to the papers?_  
  
Draco turned away from the glass case with a low scream. He could not, he would not, admit how deeply Potter had hurt him.  
  
 _Of course not, because I’m not hurt at all. Why should I be? I got what I wanted. Potter is devastated and will be for the rest of his life. Those words he wrote to me were just a desperate attempt to bandage the wound that’s already killing him._  
  
And Draco would have been satisfied with that explanation, if not for the fact that the words had infuriated him so  _much_. Potter must understand him better than Draco had given him credit for, and that suggested an intelligence and a level of careful observation that Draco could not reconcile,  _could_  not, to the image of Potter that lived in his head.   
  
 _He’s stupid. He deserves everything that happened to him. I’ll get over him and go on._  
  
The bitter voice laughed at him, and Draco knew, as he had known during the moments when his world seemed to fall in on him as he read the letter, that Potter was too smart for this, and that he did not deserve to be tormented if he retained so fine a spirit and so high a pride as to reject Draco’s attempted control over him, and that Potter’s last letter had revealed him as someone who could mark Draco’s heart, too.  
  
Again he screamed, and again, as it had all morning when he didn’t listen to it with deluded ears, it sounded like the noise of a vulture caught by one leg in a steel trap.  
  
He turned in circles, his fingers crooking, his wand almost dropping to the floor several times as his hand flexed anxiously around it. There had to be  _something_  he could do, some strain he could relieve, some outlet that would allow him to be really angry without constantly bringing up the thought that he really had no right to be angry at all.   
  
But the bitter voice laughed again, and the thoughts he had been avoiding for years—because he had never known himself well enough to entertain them, because he was careless as well as clever, because he had always seen the defeat of Potter as an end in itself and not something he, as well as Potter, would have to live past—closed in on him, swift and relentless as a hound pack tracking a fox.  
  
*  
  
Harry opened the door to the knock on it out of stubborn pride. No matter what happened, Malfoy should not hear of him brooding in his room and refusing to see anyone. Harry would face this with his head held high, and in the end the scandal would wear away, as scandals always did.  
  
It  _was_  pleasant, of course, to be caught in an embrace instead of having a chattering reporter asking him embarrassing questions. Hermione had been at the door. Harry buried his head in her shoulder and clung back, hands so strong that he felt Hermione wince. But she didn’t say a word about his hurting her.  
  
“I saw the article,” was all Hermione said, and Harry tensed, because he did wonder if she was going to scold him, and tell him that she’d always known Malfoy was no good for him. He was anticipating a speech like that from Ron. But all Hermione did was run a hand through his hair and say, her voice infinitely gentle, “Is there anything I can do?”  
  
Harry sighed. “Do you know any place we could go that isn’t closed-in, but where people wouldn’t stare at me?”  
  
“I do, as a matter of fact.” Hermione had a little smile on her face, mostly in her eyes, when Harry pulled back to look at her. “There’s a woman who almost got in trouble with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement a few years ago for poisoning a customer, but I was able to prove that it had been accidental; in fact, the silly woman who got poisoned ignored warnings that the food had ingredients she was allergic to in it. Ever since then, the restaurant owner, Lily Balfours, has owed me a debt, and she’s given me a private place to come and sit and eat and think whenever the pressure of the Department is too much. Come with me.”  
  
The woman’s name, Lily, seemed like a good omen to Harry. He took Hermione’s hand and stepped out his door.  
  
A whirring noise, a scream that sounded like it was breaking from a throat torn by previous cries, and then the imposter was upon him.  
  
*  
  
Draco sat with his hands clenched into fists and folded into his eyes.  
  
He was trembling, and there was cold sweat on his brow. He couldn’t lift his head without feeling an ache in his neck and at the corners of his eyes. Every now and then the trembling built to a shudder that made him feel as if he were sitting in cold water.   
  
He saw now, clearly, what the nature of Potter’s regard for him and his regard for Potter had been.  
  
He saw that he was a fool.  
  
How many years had he thought of revenge against Potter every  _day_ , even when there was no article in the newspaper to remind him of the Chosen One’s existence? He had done it at the height of his own triumph in constructing beautiful, prized houses. He had accepted congratulations and the tributes of lovers and the admiring glances of people who couldn’t help looking at his physical beauty even if they hated the Dark Mark on his arm, and still thought only that none of them were as beautiful as Potter’s submission would be.  
  
And then he had received that submission, and it had broken him.  
  
Draco didn’t understand how, because the strength he knew lay in conquering and breaking and destroying, but Potter had contrived to make giving and unhesitating acceptance a stronger force yet. He had smiled up at Draco with his body sated and exhausted and still bound—he had not asked Draco to remove the ropes that tied his hands to the rock in Avalon—and his eyes were glazed. Draco could have killed him in that moment and received no resistance. And still, he won.  
  
Draco experienced a moment of bitterness licking down his throat. It was Potter’s luck, of course. That was the problem. No matter how many enemies came against him, he would always experience some lucky chance that would deprive them of the power to actually hurt him.  
  
And then Draco winced. No, that wasn’t true, was it? Potter hadn’t been able to prevent his other lovers from going to the papers, and he had said it to Draco in the letter: a betrayal like that hurt him. So he didn’t escape  _unscathed_. He escaped  _unbroken_ , but that was a different thing.  
  
The thought leaped around the corner and stared at Draco with the brilliant eyes of a hunting leopard, and he could no longer avoid it.  
  
Potter had escaped heart-whole because of Draco’s own weakness. Because Draco had wanted things that he didn’t even know he wanted. Because he had not acknowledged what it meant that he mused about consuming Potter and owning him at the same time.   
  
Even now, with Potter reaching out to sever any connection between them, Draco couldn’t let him go.  
  
And that was the most pathetic thing of all.  
  
*  
  
Harry was aware that he’d shoved Hermione aside, and that his wound had opened and was paining him again, and that the imposter was running towards him with his wand out and he was probably about to be hit with a curse.  
  
But he had to admit, at the moment was paying more attention to the words that were tumbling out of the imposter’s mouth.  
  
“You spoiled it!”  
  
A violent green curse came for him, forked lightning that Harry thought in dread was the Killing Curse. But he didn’t know anyone who could cast it nonverbally, and indeed, when the lightning hit the wall beside him as he instinctively twisted aside, all it did was crack stone and make a puff of dust rise up. The Killing Curse had no effect on anything non-living it struck. Harry heaved a sigh of relief and tossed his sleeve, settling his wand in his hand.  
  
“You ruined it! You ruined  _him_!”  
  
Harry was glad for the expression the madman wore: distorted, his voice a harpy’s scream, his hands stuck out and fingers crooked as if he were about to rip the flesh from Harry’s sides. This was a way that Draco would never look. He had probably received Harry’s letter, looked struck and uncomfortable for a moment, and then laughed coolly and gone back to his habitual expression of impatient amusement.   
  
This man was not Draco, no matter how much he might wish he was.  
  
Harry aimed at his feet and whispered a spell that Percy, of all people, had discovered and used during the war when he had to incapacitate others without their noticing. The imposter didn’t notice, either, too interested in trying to open Harry’s face with a Permanent Scarring Curse. Harry ducked, and then noticed Hermione standing up and drawing her wand.  
  
He nearly barked at her to get down, but then realized the madman was focused on him, and probably wouldn’t see her. Harry kept one eye on her and realized she was raising her wand, twining it slowly. A series of golden bubbles flowed out of it. Harry smiled and matched her movements—this was a spell she had designed, but to be truly effective, it needed two wizards to cast it—and watched as his first spell took effect and the imposter’s foot began to vanish, toe by toe.  
  
“You were the one who came between me and him, between the reflection and its reality,” the imposter was ranting now. He circled in front of Harry, never looking to the right or the left, which meant he didn’t see Hermione, and never even looking down, which meant he failed to notice the golden bubbles emerging from Harry’s wand. They probably wouldn’t have meant anything to him if he had. The spell was not widely-known, and Harry didn’t think this fool had much respect for magic that didn’t involve the Dark Arts. “You were the one who prevented me from making my face into his, from breathing life into his skin, from being what he was and what he should be.  _You, you, you_ , that is all everyone can talk about, and that is all Draco Malfoy can talk about. But no more! When you’re dead, then his obsession must cease—“  
  
Enough of his toes had vanished that he suddenly tripped and stumbled, and at the same time, the net of golden bubbles flowed into being around him.  
  
Hermione had based this spell on things she’d read about humpback whales, which would breathe air bubbles together underwater to trap their prey. The net of bubbles took some time to form and was inherently fragile until it had joined, but once made, it was firmer than it seemed. Now the net crowded in on the imposter and drove him backwards, then around in circles, until the net sealed and stuck to the wall.  
  
The imposter raised his head and screamed. Harry stared. There were tears streaking his face now, and he no longer looked mad; he looked the way Draco would have if he could ever shed genuine tears.  
  
And then he was gone, Apparated out. Harry gave a startled curse. At the very least, Hermione’s net should have prevented Apparition.  
  
He stared at Hermione, who shrugged, said, “We’re dealing with a genius here, Harry,” and began casting charms to heal the wound in his side, which he barely felt. She kept her head down, but her hands shook, and it took a long time for her voice to return to its usual briskness. “Now, do you still want to visit Balfours’s restaurant?”  
  
Harry nodded distantly, his mind more preoccupied with the words that the imposter had spoken, which Harry thought must be a clue to the puzzle.  _Ruined him? Spoiled him? The idiot thinks I did something to Draco? But he couldn’t possibly have known about the letter, even if he crept through the wards; it would have gone to Draco and not him. And why does he want to kill me and not Draco now?_  
  
Then Harry took a deep breath. It was highly likely that he wouldn’t have to worry about this, anyway; Kingsley would certainly drag him off the case now with a warning for unprofessional behavior, and Harry would have protection from the imposter. And he had cast Draco off, and of course there was no chance that Draco would ever try to resume the connection.  
  
 _Malfoy. I have to remember to call him Malfoy now._  
  
*  
  
 _So. Now that you have decided all this is true, what are you going to do?_  
  
Draco took a heavy breath and brought his hands into his lap, where he could stare at them. He could feel curious gazes on him, from the portrait and the remaining photographs he hadn’t destroyed, but he ignored them. They could stare at his face; it wouldn’t reveal the tenth part of what was passing in his head.  
  
Draco was angry at himself, laceratingly angry. And he could not pretend that his anger would be soothed by trying to destroy Potter again, not now. Potter had survived the worst revenge Draco could think of on the spur of the moment, and he and his friends were alerted now, and would defend against others.  
  
 _Why was that the worst revenge you could think of? You knew that he’d had lovers go to the papers. You never would have devised something so simple and—pathetic—in a saner moment. Why did you do it?_  
  
And the answer to that question hit him with the force of the letter. Draco let himself slump forwards until his face rested in his hands.  
  
 _I cared too much about him to do something more permanent, something that stood a chance of doing him harm he couldn’t recover from. The very fact that other lovers had done this in the past was a recommendation to me._  
  
Would there never be an end to his folly and the bitter revelations he was uncovering every time he blinked? First he was more affected by their fucking than he wished to be, then Potter escaped able to heal, then he realized that he was just as hurt by the ending of their affair as Potter was—or more, since he could not have brought himself to write such a letter—and now—  
  
He shied from the words, but the thought was there, bubbling beneath the surface of his mind, even if he wouldn’t speak it.  
  
 _I care for him too deeply to do much to hurt him. I have to have him back not because I’m weak, or not only because of my weakness, but because he’s part of what I need to go securely about my day-to-day life._  
  
Draco shuddered in revulsion. He would not have thought himself able, at one point, to ever make an admission like that.  
  
 _And this is the thing Snape warned me about, the reason my father sometimes looked at me with pity in his eyes, the reason Weasley curled his lip and snarled but didn’t attack the way he should have if he suspected I was going to kill his precious friend with heartbreak. All of them knew me better than I knew myself.  
  
All of them knew that I couldn’t live without him._  
  
Draco spent a lot of time relaxing the muscles in his body, one by one, to come to terms with what he’d just thought, and what must have been true for years, if his father had had time to notice.  
  
*  
  
Lucius sank back in his chair and stared up at the empty portrait frame. There was no sense of a listening presence when he began to speak, but he was used to that. So long as she  _could_  hear, he would forgive the not-listening.  
  
“I have failed, Narcissa,” he said, and then shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s true. I have not protected Draco from himself, but I do not know that anyone could. He had to learn the lesson the way he learned it, through running headlong into the noose, and then learning how much the trap hurt when it tightened. The moment I saw him with Potter, I knew it would end no other way.  
  
“I know you cared for him, dear one, but in one way, you can’t know him as I do.” His voice lowered, and Lucius was astonished to hear bitterness creeping into the words. Well, he was alone, and the occupant of the portrait was unlikely to walk back into it at the moment. “He’s become more self-satisfied in the years since the war, almost intolerably so. He thinks he knows everything about himself and everything about the world and everything about how to live as a Malfoy. He tells other people without faltering that I’m mad because I preferred to retire from the world and try to learn who you were through your diaries. He is blind to everything except the demands of art and his own soul.  
  
“Selfish, Narcissa, to a degree that I can’t countenance in a son of my own line.” Lucius frowned; once he would indeed have been startled to hear himself speaking such words. Better selfish than losing one’s self, as his father had been accustomed to say about those who behaved like Gryffindors even when out of Hogwarts. But—“Draco is so selfish that he contents himself with what knowledge he possesses of his emotions and temperament already. It would take time and effort to look for more, and he wants that time and effort to do other things. And now—  
  
“Now he’s learning what it’s like when someone else casts a hook into your soul and you never know it’s there until it rips out.”  
  
Lucius closed his eyes. He had not seen his son since the  _Prophet_  containing the article about Potter had been delivered that evening. In fact, he was rather alone in the house at the moment. Severus had flung the paper down immediately and strode off to the Potions lab, pausing only to give Draco a cold look that Lucius did not understand. Weasley had used several dozen words that Lucius had never heard before, and then tried to Apparate out past the strengthened wards. At least he had received a severe shock, for which he had actually apologized, when the wards repelled him, but he had gone nonetheless. Probably to be with and comfort his grieving friend, Lucius thought.  
  
And Draco?  
  
Lucius did not know exactly where he was or what he was doing, but he didn’t need to. He had read the truth on his son’s face the moment he stared at the headline. Draco had looked sick and pale and weak with the strength of his own feelings, and the surprise of experiencing those feelings at all.  
  
He had looked, in fact, as Lucius knew he had looked when he heard of Narcissa’s death.  
  
*  
  
“What are you going to do?”  
  
Harry sighed and lifted his eyes reluctantly from his food to look at Hermione. The meal had been delicious; Harry wasn’t sure what kind of meat lay at the bottom of either his sandwich or his stew, but it was thick and naturally spicy and seemed to introduce his tongue to some new taste every time he took a spoonful. The sandwich had been covered with a white-red sauce that Harry was tempted to lick his plate to get every trace of. The drinks were plain water, but that tasted better with the stew, in particular, than he would have reckoned.  
  
And there were carvings of lilies on the tables, on the walls, on the fireplace mantelpieces, on the chairs. It comforted Harry more than he would have thought possible to see his mother’s namesake flower in every corner.  
  
Lily Balfours herself had taken one look at their faces, bowed, and escorted them to a corner table where they could be alone. Privacy wards kept Harry from worrying that reporters would chase him into the restaurant or that their conversation would be of interest to any other patrons.   
  
But of course the end of the meal had to come, and, with it, the beginning of the conversation.  
  
Harry grimaced, traced one finger through the sauce on his plate, and then shrugged. “I don’t know, actually,” he said. “Brave it out as best I can. The  _Prophet_  grew bored of Penelope eventually, and it’ll have to happen with Malfoy, too.” He was proud of himself for remembering to call the git by his last name, this time. “It’ll be harder since it’s spread across multiple days, but—“  
  
“I didn’t mean about that.” Hermione leaned forwards and caught his hand. “I meant about getting revenge on Malfoy.”  
  
Harry stared at her for a few moments, then snorted. “I don’t want revenge on him, Hermione,” he said. “I want him to take his slimy face and his pure-blood heritage and his sneering face and  _go away_.” Stronger bitterness than he liked infected his words, but if he couldn’t be bitter in front of one of his best friends, who could he show his real emotions to? “I don’t want to see him or speak to him or listen to any flattery or excuses that he might dream up. And taking revenge on him would prove that I’m noticing him more than he deserves.”  
  
Hermione bowed her head for a moment, then nodded, slowly. “I can see that,” she said. “But Ron will have a hard time accepting it.”  
  
“I don’t care.” Harry slammed his free hand down on the table, making Hermione jump. “This is  _my_  life, and I don’t have to share it with Malfoy or Ron’s revenge if I don’t want to. And I’ll never want to share it with the first again.”  
  
Hermione leaned forwards and stared intently into his face, probably trying to see if he was telling the truth. Harry stared steadily back, until she smiled and picked up her water, rubbing his hand with her thumb. “Good man,” she said.  
  
Harry shrugged again. He was only doing what his natural inclinations told him to do, the thing that made the most sense. Why would he want to see Malfoy again? From now on, the idiot would always be dragging the dead ghost of the potential man, the one he could have become and whom Harry would have really loved, behind him.   
  
 _I never want to see him again._  
  
*  
  
After hours of thought, only one plan was clear in Draco’s head, fluttering brilliant wings and bouncing up and down.   
  
 _I need to see him again._


	20. Do Not, For One Repulse, Forego The Purpose

Draco ate breakfast quietly the next morning, his eyes fastened on the window as if he were too far above the house-elves and Lucius even to notice them. Lucius made a show of eating his own breakfast, but in reality his gaze spent more time on his son than on his plate. His throat closed and burned when he tried to speak, however.  
  
And he did not think that the result of some spell Draco had cast.  
  
 _I wish I could know what he was thinking, without asking. The question would betray my interest, and then Draco is more likely to shut his heart and his face against me than ever. He would shut his expression even now, did he know how much his lack of emotion betrays._  
  
Not that Lucius knew much more than that Draco was disturbed. And if he did not know more than that, how was he supposed to protect his son? But how was he supposed to learn more than that?  
  
He leaned back in his chair, holding a cup of tea, and blew gently across the surface of the liquid whilst closing his eyes. The chances that Draco would suddenly look at him were small, but if it happened, Lucius despised the notion of betraying his own agitation.  
  
 _I must choose a tactic with which to approach him. When I am out of sorts and floundering about in my head, fearful to do anything for fear of betraying myself, then I do worse than alienating him._  
  
Lucius finished his tea and leaned forwards. Sometimes, as the moment shaped itself, the right strategy would come to him. Draco’s gaze darted in his direction, and Lucius saw him deliberately swallow the last bite of his eggs before he laid aside his cutlery. Of course the elves appeared at once to whisk the setting away. Narcissa had trained them to a nicety in the observation of such things before she—finished, using methods perfected on the Black house-elves.  
  
“Yes, Father?” Draco asked when the obligatory moment of respectful silence had crept past. His voice chimed, his eyes shimmered like crystal, and his face continued to convey nothing at all.  
  
“I wish to understand,” Lucius said, and did not know he would speak the words until he had spoken them. They poured through his lips like pus from a lanced boil. “Why did you go to the papers about Potter? I can understand your being offended that he chose to pursue a sexual relationship with you when he was needed to serve as a bodyguard; I can even understand your being angry that he was not as good a fuck as you had spent years envisioning. But to take this sort of petty revenge—to rip your own heart out of your breast—“ He paused and then shook his head, rapidly, several times, as much in wonder at himself as at Draco’s stupidity. “I thought I had taught you better than to bare such a wound, at least. But you wrote that article in the blood of it.”  
  
 _Apparently, my tactic is to be honesty_ , he thought, when he finished speaking.  _Very well, then_. One lesson he had tried to learn in the years since Narcissa’s death, impossible though it had proven to learn when considering her in particular, was not to regret the unchangeable. He touched the table, and an elf appeared with a fresh cup of tea in the time it took his fingers to come to rest, so that he would not look ridiculous making an empty gesture.  
  
Draco’s eyes had opened very wide, lending his pupils the effect of a polished window that looked out on a cliff of granite. And no more than that, Lucius thought, his pulse beating in frustration under the skin of his throat as he stared at his son. He had learned the lesson against displaying emotion far too well.  
  
“I did not tear out my heart,” Draco said at last, voice curiously correct. “I tore out his.”  
  
But his words had a wavering undertone that Lucius had been listening for, and so he was not content to let his son get away with that outright lie. He shook his head and leaned closer, and Draco leaned back in his chair as though they were balanced on opposite sides of a scale. Lucius felt pity stab through him. Draco was worse off than he had thought, if his gestures betrayed him, though his face remained perfectly smooth and calm.   
  
“You could not pull out one without the other,” Lucius said. “They beat together.” He paused, but Draco sat there, unblinking and unbreathing. Lucius burst out before he could stop himself, as if the emotions that had spent years piling up behind the weakened walls of his psyche had grown too dense at last. “Draco, why cannot you  _admit_  that you made a mistake, and call upon him to apologize for the article?” He snatched the paper that lay on the table between them, bearing the next smug installment of Draco’s exposé about Potter. “And then perhaps you can convince Skeeter to retract  _this_  monstrosity.”  
  
Draco lifted his head. Lucius would have thought his face as still as before, but this time his own pulse was trembling, throbbing and making the skin at his throat quiver oddly. Lucius held his tongue.  
  
“Why, Father,” Draco said, with a scrim of sarcasm on the surface of his voice; it would crack like autumn ice if pressed, Lucius knew. “I do not know how to respond. You urge me to honesty and to stand against honesty in the same breath.”  
  
“I am tired of fencing with you, Draco.” Lucius rose to his feet, and suddenly, strangely, it was so  _easy_  to announce what he was going to do, even knowing that Draco would take some step to counteract him. “I can see that you need Potter to survive. Where you developed this strange dependence, I don’t know, but I will not see my son wither away for lack of an easily obtained cure. I will give you a day. If you do nothing, then I will write to Potter myself, begging his forgiveness and describing what the thought of him turning against you forever has done to you.”  
  
Draco surged upwards and leaned across the table with a graceful twist of his neck that made Lucius think of a sea serpent. “You will  _not_.”  
  
Lucius narrowed his eyes and spread his fingers in a minute motion. In moments, the tablecloth had vanished from the table, leaving his teacup demurely in place, and the chair Draco had been half-leaning against was gone, making him stagger.   
  
“I still rule here,” Lucius told him flatly. “You need not think that you can flatter and fuck  _me_  into compliance.”  
  
And he turned and left the room, conscious, for the first time in a long time, of Draco’s disbelieving stare on his back.  
  
It was a good feeling.  
  
*  
  
 _He doesn’t have the right—_  
  
Draco seized the voice in his head that was raging on about Lucius’s rights and his daring and cast it away into a locked corner of his mind. He could not fight his father if he were irrational. And he had already come close enough to irrationality when he saw the  _Prophet’s_ article this morning, which featured a photograph of him leaning forwards as if to touch the reader’s shoulder confidingly.  
  
He sat down at the table again, taking one of the other chairs. When he glanced at the paper, a half-remembered sentence—“ _writhed like a whore strapped to the rack_ ”—caught his eye. He looked away.  
  
Lucius had only acted as a goad to the resolution he had already formed. He  _knew_  he had to announce himself to Potter again and do his best to explain, or demand an explanation, or use the charm and the seduction that had already proven themselves once to cozen Potter into accepting him. He had merely debated how to do it, since the letter Potter had sent seemed to promise a final and irrevocable separation.  
  
Now he had to choose, and perhaps he should thank his father for the thought that immediately sprang to mind.  _When in doubt about what to do, choose frontal assault. Nothing so confuses your enemies when you have a reputation for indirectness and double dealing. They will be so busy checking for traps under the surface that they will not bother to confront you and turn aside the actual advances you make._  
  
Draco began to smile. He knew his own honesty, and though he had a small stock of it, to be carefully dealt out, he could deal that small stock to Potter. Meanwhile, he thought he could gauge Potter’s honesty accurately.  
  
And that letter, stinging as it had been, was dishonest. Potter meant to defend himself and hurt Draco with the words, no more. He would not really slam the door shut in Draco’s face if he showed up on his threshold.  
  
Draco knew where he lived, of course. That was something he had made sure of in the early days, when the relics room under the Manor was only a dream and he had thought he might manage to exist without defeating Potter. He would go to the flat, wait patiently until Potter showed himself if he was out, and then explain everything. It ought to be simple to convince Potter to send his friends away, should he appear with them. He wouldn’t want them to hear whatever private might pass between him and Draco.  
  
Course decided, Draco rose to his feet, destroying the  _Daily Prophet_  with a casual flick of his wand and a flash of whispered flame.  
  
*  
  
“You understand, Harry?”  
  
Harry stirred restlessly for a moment, staring at the series of wet rings that marched along the edge of Kingsley’s desk. What did he set there? It was a strange fact of Harry’s life that he rarely saw Kingsley drinking anything but a single cup of tea, which was certainly not enough to make his desk look like a table out of the Three Broomsticks.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
“Yes, I understand.” Harry looked up at Kingsley. “But I don’t want to let the case go, you know that.” Resolutions to be brave and noble and do what was best for himself were harder to keep in the cold light of morning. Despite knowing pleading would do no good, he did it anyway. “Couldn’t I stay away from Draco entirely and work on the imposter angle of the case? I could try to find out where he came from, and that shouldn’t be as dangerous as guarding Draco or confronting him directly. I know Ron said he thought you’d found some hints at his real identity recently—“  
  
“The very fact that you can’t call Malfoy by his last name shows how deeply involved you’ve become, Harry,” said Kingsley, and there was an infinite gentleness in his voice that hurt Harry worse than open pity would have.  
  
“Sorry, sir,” he muttered, looking at the floor.  
  
“The person you should apologize to is yourself.” Kingsley leaned across the desk and settled a heavy hand on his wrist. Startled, Harry looked up to meet his friend’s concerned eyes. It was the same way Ron and Hermione had looked at him last night. Ordinarily, he would have rebelled against the stifling effect of all that concern, but it was rather nice to see now, as contrasted against the effect Draco’s words in the paper had produced. “I see that your obsession with Malfoy has been a festering sore for years now. I should never have assigned you to the case at all—“  
  
“I’m the best you have,” Harry said. “You know that when we didn’t have a clue what the imposter was doing—“  
  
“We  _still_  don’t have a clue what the imposter is doing,” Kingsley said firmly. “Why did he attack you, if he’s interested in discrediting Malfoy or taking his place? Why did he try his best to kill you, with a ferocity he had reserved for Malfoy before this? Why did he switch from committing minor crimes to trying to commit murder?” He sighed and shook his head. “No, Harry, this is still the most baffling case I’ve ever worked. And you’ve done enough. It’s true that we needed you in the first portion of the case, and you’re probably the only reason Malfoy survived so many direct attacks. But now you’ve been wounded and personally hurt by the man you were trying to protect, and we have other Aurors who can take over the routine investigation and bodyguard work. I want you at a distance from this case for your physical and your  _mental_  health, Harry.” Harry figured the last had been added so quickly because Kingsley had seen Harry open his mouth to protest that his wound was fine. “And a complete isolation from news, unless we encounter signs that the imposter is seeking you to threaten you, is the best way to do that.”  
  
Harry swallowed and nodded. He had to remind himself  _again_  that Draco had hurt him, and he had a right to withdraw from the world to think about it for a while. With Penelope and the rest, he’d had to swallow his pain and continue working; none of it had ever been connected with his job before.   
  
“And it will look better, too,” Kingsley said, in a murmur so quiet that Harry could hardly hear him. “There will be people watching to see if we discipline the Savior of the Wizarding World for sleeping with someone he was supposed to protect. If we send you away under guard for a short period of time, then we can pretend that you’ve been suspended for that.”  
  
Harry nodded and gave a wan smile. Yes, suspending his work on this case was the best course; he knew that. It made sense from all angles.  
  
From all but the angle that said he should be protecting Draco anyway—from a distance, of course—and that he would be a coward to run away. He’d sent Draco a proud letter, and now he was going to turn his back and bound into hiding?   
  
But those feelings meant nothing against the hard look in Kingsley’s eyes, which he kept on Harry even as he chose several sheaves of parchment and splayed them across the desk.  
  
“There are several Ministry properties under Fidelius. Which one would you prefer? There’s a nice cottage on the coast of Wales…”  
  
*  
  
The first book held no solutions. Not the strongest mind-controlling potion Severus knew of could persuade Potter to lay aside his enmity against Draco, not when that enmity was so recent and excellently seated.  
  
(The Mind-Shaping Potion, now, that held possibilities for the time when the hatred began to wear off and Potter would be more susceptible to considering Draco’s side of the sordid mess. It was powerful, subtle, could enter the subject by touching the skin as well as by ingestion, and worked well when the enmity was a month old).  
  
The second book held no answers, either. Severus laid it aside reverently, however. It had reminded him of a Dark Arts potion that he had always meant to pursue, though brewing it under either Dumbledore or Voldemort’s nose would have meant suicide.  
  
And the third book…  
  
Severus held the third book still in his lap and gazed down at it as he ran his finger over the lettering on the front. Dark purple, heavy script imprinted on ornamented leather; the leather itself was worked with gold and bands of a glittering, crumbling substance Severus knew was mother-of-pearl. The title said simply,  _Of Potions of Control, Bright and Dark._  
  
The potions in this book were guaranteed to give mastery of the mind, the body, the soul, or the magic of a wizard to whoever used the potion. If he brewed carefully—most of the recipes were difficult even for a Potions master, which was one of the reasons Severus had never shown Draco this book—and ensured that no hand but his gave Potter the potion, then Severus could command the Chosen One to come back to Malfoy Manor the next day. And no matter how assiduously his friends investigated Potter’s bloodstream, saliva, semen, and urine, no trace of the potion would alert them. It would exaggerate Potter’s obsession with Draco to overwhelming amounts, and in the end his friends would have to give in and accept that it was simply this emotion leading him back to Draco’s side and his bed.  
  
Draco would be ecstatic. Potter himself would know no difference; this potion had been developed by wizards who wanted willing slaves, and so he would experience the change in his emotions as natural.  
  
Severus could solve the problem at one stroke.  
  
But he did not know if he wanted to.  
  
He half-closed his eyes and thought of the article Draco had carried to the  _Prophet._  Skeeter had certainly provided the narrative context, the photographs, and the majority of the supercilious tone. But the words themselves, the “confessions” of what he and Potter did together in bed, were Draco’s.  
  
Severus spent some time sifting the words through his memory, sharpened by years of noting small details in his spying life and the clinging grasp of a Potions master’s mind, which stored all manner of trivia on the off-chance that it would be useful in brewing someday. When he was certain he had the essence of the article stripped down before his inner eye, shining as if cut with a diamond from glass, he opened his physical eyes and slightly shook his head.  
  
Draco had willfully betrayed a man he cared a great deal for, though the  _why_  of that emotion was as much beyond Severus as Albus’s will towards goodness had been whilst Albus lived. He had done it in the least flattering and the most hurtful way possible. Even buried in his lab as he was, Severus was aware that more than one of Potter’s past lovers had gone to the papers; one would have to cut off one’s eyes and ears not to know that, and even then, someone would seize one’s hands and insist on spelling the news out.  
  
Perhaps Potter had escaped pain. Perhaps Draco had miscalculated how much the article would hurt him—but Severus did not think so. Draco had to have learned  _something_  about Potter in the years he had tracked him and obsessed over him, though not his own heart.  
  
He had betrayed what he shared with Potter as Severus had betrayed his friendship with Lily, but not in the flaring impulse of a moment, regretted as soon as it was done, and not taken back mostly because of stubborn pride.   
  
And should he escape suffering for that, when Severus had spent the rest of his life in the shadow of his own deed?  
  
 _No._  
  
Severus stood and put the third book carefully away, then walked over to the nearest clean cauldron and conjured a fire under it, drawing the second book out to rest on his arm.  
  
*  
  
Harry thought he had turned to stone or dreams for a moment when he came around the corner outside his flat and saw Draco standing against the door—or both. Some moment like this had appeared in his nightmares occasionally. Then he straightened, shook his head, and took a deep breath. No, this moment was reality, and Harry had the right to feel more than the helpless terror or admiration he usually did when in a dream.  
  
Draco lifted his head when he saw Harry, and for a moment it seemed as if he trembled. His face was pale. Then a smile widened across his lips, and stare as he might, Harry could see no consciousness, no shyness, to that smile. Draco looked as if he thought a simple explanation would right things.  
  
Rage chased Harry’s weakness away. He moved a step forwards, eyes narrowed, breath breaking through his lips in hungry pants. Hermione, who had stopped behind him, began to hurry forwards, but Harry lifted his hand without looking at her. Draco gazed at him curiously in the meantime, as if he had seen but not understood Harry’s change in demeanor.   
  
And the idea that he  _could not_  understand, that nothing Harry had said made any difference to him, drove the rage to a height that made Harry say in a grinding voice, “Leave, Hermione,” though Merlin knew he wasn’t angry at her.  
  
Hermione had more sense than Malfoy. She stepped back around the corner, and Harry was alone with the man he had obsessed over and fallen in love with and let fuck him in the grass of a magical place that still made him tingle to remember it.  
  
Draco lifted his hands before his face, as if he really considered that that would slow down the magic, should Harry decide to strike. “Harry, listen to me,” he said, voice soft and slow and commanding. “There are various reasons why I hurried to Skeeter, reasons I can explain. I know you don’t understand them yet, but you never will if you don’t listen to them.” His voice took on a lightly chiding tone. “You assumed the worst when you sent me that letter, you know, and yet you hadn’t even taken the time to listen, to look, to think. You could have waited for me to send you a letter first.”  
  
“The article was your message,” said Harry, his voice hoarse.  
  
Draco cocked his head and sighed delicately. “One that you lacked the skill to read, Harry. I only intended to warn off the rest of the world, give them a few morsels to satisfy their salacious curiosity, and create some privacy for us. If they  _thought_  they knew what was really going on, they’d be more likely to leave us in peace later—“  
  
And Harry couldn’t  _stand_  it. Draco didn’t even have the courage to own his revenge. Instead, he jumped back into deceptions so simple a child would have seen through them, and for what? Why?  
  
 _Because he thinks me that stupid. Because he mistook a willingness to trust and let him prove himself for a lack of intelligence._  
  
Harry barely had to concentrate. Draco’s jaw froze, a heavy invisible weight pressing down on his tongue, as Harry’s wandless magic sparked along his nerves. He stood there with his arms folded and considered Draco with a faint smile until Draco began to make inarticulate protesting noises, trying to move his tongue. A line of drool slid down his chin; he no longer had the ability to shut his mouth.  
  
“There was a time when I would have given much for you to look at me like that,” Harry said softly.  
  
Draco had the audacity to let his eyes narrow. Of course he wasn’t ashamed, even now, Harry thought. And the pity he had been feeling since last night suddenly overwhelmed the anger. He stepped closer and let Draco see it. Draco blinked and stopped struggling.  
  
“Not now,” Harry said. “Now, I can only be ashamed of myself for falling in love with someone so cowardly, so childish, so unwilling and unready to face the world despite being twenty-seven years old.” He shrugged. “I have to live with myself and what falling in love with you says about me for the rest of my life. But I don’t have to live with  _you_. Go back to your lair, lick your wounds, and brood over the wrongs I’ve done you. And I have done worse than you have,” he added, despite the protesting way Hermione’s robes rustled around the corner. “Because I expected you to aspire to an impossible standard of goodness, cleverness, and artistry. I should have known you’d never be more than yourself.”  
  
He flicked his hand, and Draco vanished, Apparated unwillingly back to Malfoy Manor. Then Harry took a deep breath, gathered up the strength that he had thought might be weakened by pity and the shock of seeing Draco again, and called Hermione from around the corner.  
  
At least that was one good thing about Kingsley’s plan. He was going to a cottage on the coast of Wales under the Fidelius Charm, with Ron for bodyguard. He’d like to see Malfoy find him  _there_.


	21. Action Is Eloquence

Draco probed his teeth gingerly with his tongue. He thought Potter must have loosened some of them when he popped Draco back into his house,  _through the wards_.  
  
He had power. More than Draco had estimated, enough that it had probably left Potter panting on the floor when he exercised it, since lifting another Auror into the air with it had exhausted him.  
  
But that was small comfort when Draco knew he had been the target of that magic, dismissed from Potter’s presence like a naughty child.  
  
He took a deep breath and sat down on his bed, rubbing his fingers absently over his jaw. What he would have liked to do was clench them into a fist and punch the wall, but that wasn’t permissible. Potter had won two victories over him so far: he had forced Draco to doubt his own emotions and face how much he  _didn’t_  really want to enact his revenge, and he had made him accept that convenient and easy lies wouldn’t be enough anymore. He would not force Draco into childish expressions of anger.  
  
So. He couldn’t lie. It had seemed so easy when he stood in front of Potter and saw the shock mixed with simmering adoration—even now, even after—in those green eyes. He could win Potter back if he played on his affection and told him that Draco had simply acted to secure their future together. Potter would have to believe it. He was too enthralled to the love he had constructed mostly in his own mind. He had rejected Draco because the betrayal to the  _Prophet_  had been too great a disruption of the perfect confidence he thought lovers should share, but when Draco came back, humble and penitent, he would have to change his mind.  
  
And Harry had shown him it wouldn’t be that easy.  
  
Draco swallowed.  _Somehow_ , he would have to manage a confrontation with no one around, so that he could speak freely. Confessing his weakness and his mistakes would be hard enough in front of the one person who deserved to hear the apology. In front of someone like Weasley or Granger, impossible.  
  
“I never knew someone could hurt me this much,” he whispered into the echoing silence of his bedroom, staring at the conjured bed that Harry hadn’t slept in for two nights now and which looked emptier than Draco’s own bed after a month elsewhere. “When did that become possible? The moment I started my obsession? Or the moment I brought him here? Or some other time?” He paused, distracted from his own thoughts by the remembrance of the flinty shine in Lucius’s eyes that morning. “And if my father felt something like this for my mother, how did he ever stand it, in life or in death?”  
  
For the first time in years, Draco felt a flash of pity for his father.  
  
But it didn’t last long. He was busy planning ways to win Potter back, and he needed all his attention, all his cunning and cleverness, for himself.  
  
*  
  
“It’s nice, isn’t it?”  
  
Harry smiled as he looked around the cottage. It was actually bigger than his flat, but then, that only made sense; he spent barely any time in the flat, what with working on cases and entertaining friends and lovers and allies, and he would be living here. The walls were long, the ceilings low, and it sprawled off into the distance like a labyrinth. Harry could hear water flowing and the loud calls of exotic birds. He hoped absently that magic had only replicated the sound of the birds, and not actually Summoned them. He had swallowed enough feathers trying to recapture that hippogriff that the imposter had let loose.  
  
“Come on,” said Ron, who was hovering in the doorway whilst Harry and Hermione entrained themselves by looking at the cottage. “Come in and see the rest of it.”  
  
Harry ducked through the door, and blinked in surprise when he straightened in the small entrance hall and found out the ceiling had lifted to accommodate his head. Ron grinned at him. “It adjusts itself to the most comfortable size for its inhabitants.” He gestured, and for the first time, Harry noticed that the ceiling above  _his_  head was higher than the rest of it. “Mum would have killed for something like this when she had seven children at home in the Burrow.”  
  
Harry nodded fervently, thinking of what his childhood would have been like if he could expand his cupboard at will, and turned in a circle. The hall was covered with blue paneling, trimmed with pale wood painted with even paler decorations, a subtle bending pattern of flowers that turned to one of vines and interlocked sheaves of grain, then to stylized birds, then to leaping animals that Harry thought might be gazelles or unicorns, which melted back into the flowers as they renewed the circle. The ceiling rippled softly, also blue, either the magic or the velvet that covered it making it look like a bubble ready to pop at any moment. Harry wandered into the next room, the drawing room, and the ceiling promptly drew up and the walls pulled back. He found himself staring into yet another shade of blue, this one as pale as sun-shadows on a morning expanse of snow. Windows gazed out at cliffs, some of them gray, some black, some dazzlingly white. Harry wondered for a moment, absently, which was the true view that actually surrounded the cottage. He’d had time to see that the area was mountainous when he and Hermione Apparated in, but not much else.  
  
“The library’s full of books,” said Hermione behind him. Harry could hear the faint, rapid rap of her nails on her satchel, which she used when she wanted to keep from bouncing with excitement. “There’s a private indoor Quidditch Pitch for entertainment, too, if you get bored. And plenty of—“  
  
Ron made a shushing noise, and Hermione obligingly shut her mouth. Harry felt a smile tug at his lips. He made sure to give Ron a small nod before he made his way further into the house, looking up at the ceilings, trailing his hands along the walls.  
  
This was the place that might be his home for the next several weeks or months, for all he knew. There was no telling how long it would be until the Aurors caught the imposter—particularly without Harry there to help them—and even then, Harry could see himself wanting to remain here until he had proof Draco had lost interest in him and moved on to some other innocent to swindle and trick.  
  
 _Malfoy. His name is Malfoy._  
  
Harry snarled to no one as he investigated the library, which was exactly as stocked as Hermione had promised, so filled with bookshelves that Harry had a difficult time finding a place for his own feet. He would eventually learn to call Draco by his last name again, but until he did, he thought, he would have to accept that he was more stubborn and backwards than his friends wanted him to be.   
  
“Look at this one.” Hermione darted past him and reached for one of the books on the lowest of the shelves. From the shining glance she cast him, Harry decided that she was physically unable to keep silent any longer. He smiled, reluctantly and in spite of himself drawn in as Hermione showed him the drawing of a golden wheel on the leather cover and explained that it was an exploration of wizarding history and the points where it touched and bled into Muggle history.  
  
 _You’ll need longer than a few days to get over Draco, yes, because you’re the only one who knows how much he could have been worth. But you also need a commitment to getting over him, instead of brooding on him. And there are worse pursuits, as Hermione would say, than reading history whilst you wait for your heart to change._  
  
*  
  
Draco hesitated, turning his wand in his fingers. He didn’t particularly want to enter this place again. But he had seen the ease and courtesy with which the proprietor welcomed Potter, and he had to believe that if someone could tell him some valuable information about him, it would be this woman.  
  
Weasley and Granger would be even more valuable sources, of course, but Draco had a desire to  _survive_  the initial encounter with the person who would tell him about Potter.  
  
He stepped into the Imperatrix and waited for the dizzying flash of the wards to crawl over him and then slow down. He released a slight breath when he found himself standing in the brilliant entrance he had seen once before. Though Potter had said that people could find the restaurant who had been invited or entered with someone who was, Draco hadn’t been sure the permission would extend to embrace him if he came unescorted.  
  
From the cold strength on Faustine’s face as she walked out to confront him, it should not have.  
  
“I have heard what you have done,” she said, a trace of a sharp accent coming out in her voice that Draco hadn’t noticed before. “You will not get away with it here. I will give you no information to the disadvantage of a dear friend, and therefore you might as well go away again.” She folded her hands in front of her. Draco saw the rings that shone on her fingers, and winced as the edge of light poking out from one like a sword cut into his eyes. They bore powerful enchantments, ones that he would be reluctant to confront even with the weapons that he carried hidden about him—if only because  _using_  those weapons would advertise their existence to his enemies.  
  
“You don’t understand,” Draco began.  
  
“I understand more than Harry does, more than you do.” Shadows moved and flickered on Faustine’s face like the light of the moon moving over a stormy sea. “I understand that you find yourself weak in his shadow, and you sought to destroy him because you thought your life would improve if he weren’t looming over you. You have a small soul, of course, that cannot change its size.”  
  
Draco seized the anger twisting him and held himself fiercely still. It would avail him nothing now if he made a mess of things  _again_ , this time by destroying the one tentative contact he might still have with Potter.  
  
“And if I wanted to change its size?” he asked.  
  
Faustine lifted her head. A gold tracery along the side of one eye flashed and caught Draco’s attention, and he felt a reluctant admiration stir; the woman had inlaid one of her scars with magic. Draco had heard of such things, but he was not quite desperate enough to sacrifice his beauty to power. “Such things may be done,” she said. “But with difficulty. Dangerously. Expensively.”  
  
“You know I can afford it,” Draco said, glad to hear a reference to money. It moved the conversation back onto ground he was more familiar with than he was with this talk of souls and the rest.  
  
“Not in that way.” Faustine looked distantly amused, which Draco wanted to rage at. This time he had to bite his tongue hard in order to draw a little blood and make himself listen politely. “It costs the person making the change. Are you prepared to overthrow your assumptions, to humble your pride, to bow your head and admit you were wrong?”  
  
Of all the things she could have chosen, she had to put her finger on the one that was the most painful to him, the reason he had lied to Harry the last time he saw him. Draco exhaled hard, his eyes falling to the ground. “My lady—“ he began, and saw her shake her head warningly. She didn’t want empty courtesy. She wanted an answer now.  
  
“Yes,” he said, anger giving him the strength to stare at her and lean forwards so that she could see the sharp lines that bent his eyes at the corners. “Yes. Is that what you want to hear? Yes.”  
  
Faustine gave him a maddening smile and turned away. “Then you won’t mind coming with me and passing a small test so we can be assured it is so,” she murmured.  
  
Draco followed, because what choice did he have?  
  
*  
  
“What do you really feel for him?”  
  
Harry started and looked up from the meal of soft baked fish he and Ron had started eating half an hour ago. In all that time, no sound had passed between them but the soft scrape and clink of fork and spoon on the plate. Ron had seemed perfectly content to stare at nothing and daydream whilst he ate, and Harry had welcomed the silence so that he could put his thoughts in order.  
  
But now Ron leaned forwards, the mug of butterbeer dangling from his hand, and stared so hard that Harry knew he wouldn’t get out of this inquisition.  
  
He swallowed and looked down at the plate again. “I despise him for what he did to me,” he said. That much was easy to say, because he knew that Ron expected to hear it, and yet it still scraped at his throat. If he despised Draco, wasn’t he contributing to that littleness of spirit that was the  _thing_  he despised? Draco would not grow better for his scorn. “It’s so—so self-serving. I know that he was softening around me by the end. He took me to a private place, a place of pure magic, that I can’t believe he would have allowed me to see if he only felt hatred towards me.”  
  
“Malfoys have done some incredible things in the name of hatred,” Ron said thoughtfully.  
  
“But they haven’t profaned what they considered sacred, have they?” Harry looked up at him. “At least, I don’t think so.”  
  
“And what else do you feel for him?”  
  
Harry grimaced. Trust Ron, at least the newly sensitive Ron of the last few years who paid strict attention when he discovered Harry was hurting, to pick up on the fact that contempt was not the end-all and be-all of his emotions towards Draco— _Malfoy_.  
  
“I still want him,” he said. Ron made a horrible face, rolling his eyes, but said nothing, so Harry didn’t snap at him. “I still think he’s beautiful, and talented, and could make something more than even an impressive architect of himself, if only he would  _try_. But since he won’t, then I don’t see why I should keep on trying  _for_  him. I wanted him to be larger than he was, and trusted he would go in that direction. And I think I saw the desire to rise, to become as generous and open-hearted as his reputation in the last few years pretended he was, in his eyes. But something we shared that night frightened him away.”  
  
“It’s so odd to talk about this with you,” Ron muttered, swirling the butterbeer in his mug. Before Harry could retort that Ron shouldn’t have brought up the subject if he didn’t want to talk about it, Ron met his eyes again and smiled wryly. “I always thought you’d get over your obsession with Malfoy and go on to someone else.”  
  
“You could think that?” Harry leaned back in his chair and sipped his own pumpkin juice slowly. He rarely drank it now; the wizards and witches in charge of distributing food in the Ministry seemed to feel it was the food of the enemy, and what he could find for sale in the shops never matched his own memory of the freshness of the drink at Hogwarts. But the house-elves, or automatic shopping pantry, or whatever else supplied the food here—Harry hadn’t been into the kitchens yet—fetched juice just the way he liked it. “When you had an obsession of your own?”  
  
“It was more than lust, to be close to her.” Ron’s voice took on a hushed, religious tone for a moment, and then he added, “But yes, I did think you would balk at being that vulnerable to Malfoy, when it came right down to it.”  
  
Harry sighed and toyed with his mug. He reckoned he could understand that. Ron had always needed to be the strong one, in control; he had dealt badly with it when some criminals captured them and tortured Harry, tying Ron up so that he could only watch helplessly. He had never learned Harry’s lessons in childhood, that just because you gave in and let other people do what they wanted to you for a time didn’t mean that you abandoned your emotional control.  
  
“I didn’t,” said Harry. “I think  _he_  balked at being so vulnerable to  _me_ , and that was the main reason he ran away and didn’t change.” He smiled a bit when he saw Ron’s blink. Yes, he understood this explanation, whereas he had looked baffled at Harry’s previous talk of being larger and rising.  
  
“But you were the one who was—uh.” Ron suddenly the found the bottom of his mug interesting. “The powerless one.”  
  
“Do you think Hermione’s powerless when you’re having sex?” Harry raised his eyebrows.  
  
“No!” Ron’s face was flaming. “But that’s different.”  
  
“Why?” Harry hid his grin behind his juice, whilst Ron’s mouth opened and shut several times. He was baiting Ron; he knew some of the differences, both the ones that existed and the ones that people assumed did, since he’d been in relationships with both men and women himself. But every now and then, it was good to make Ron think beyond the automatic assumptions he picked up from God knew where. Hermione wasn’t telling him anything so simple, that was certain.  
  
“Because it is,” Ron muttered finally, and returned to the attack. “But you scared him—that surprises me.”  
  
“Does it?” Harry put his cup down again. His appetite was gone. He was remembering the sharp shine in Draco’s eyes, the way that Draco had trembled above him and arched his head back, half-screaming in protest as he came. His fingers had ripped at the grass. Harry had wondered then if that was merely a substitute for the clawing at Harry’s flesh Draco would have liked to do; now, he was certain of it. “I think you’re right, and he was a coward in school. That hasn’t changed much. Draco still doesn’t like to risk himself for the sake of a reward that he doesn’t  _know_  will be worth it. And I offered him hope, change—risk. He couldn’t take the chance that he would try to change himself and still fail. So he ran away, and put the temptation beyond his reach by betraying me to the  _Prophet_.”  
  
“But he showed up at your flat.” Ron lifted his head and eyed Harry as if he thought Harry might be trying to change the story on him. “Hermione told me that.”  
  
“I think most of the motives I’m telling you about were subconscious.” Harry laughed, and then stopped, because he hated how bitter it sounded. “Of course he isn’t going to admit he’s a coward, is he? He thinks that he was taking revenge on me, but it would be the  _best_ revenge to make me come crawling back to him even after he’s hurt me so badly.”  
  
Ron snorted in disgust. “What a prick.”  
  
“Yes, he is.” Harry finished his pumpkin juice with unnecessary violence.  
  
*  
  
Faustine led him into a back room that made Draco’s shoulders stiffen with both affronted professional pride and wariness. No practiced architect had designed this room, which had walls with the wrong kind of sharpness and decorative pillars in corners where they weren’t needed to support anything. And in the middle of the room, to make it worse, was an enormous table made of a dark red-black wood, as if it had been coated in spilt blood. Faustine stood on one side of this alarming table and gestured for Draco to take a seat on the other side.  
  
“I’ll stand, thanks.” Draco was impressed with himself for keeping his voice calm and cold and soft.  
  
“Then you’ll forsake my help,” Faustine said simply, and retracted her hands from the shelf she’d been reaching for.  
  
Draco drew an irritated breath and sat down in the chair, which was a massively carved thicket of wood, branches sprouting out of the arms and legs to fence him. He shifted uneasily and then told himself not to be so stupid. Faustine would be sure to take advantage of any nervousness he showed. Caution was acceptable, fear was not. “Do you want me to take Veritaserum?” he asked. “I would be willing to do so.”  
  
“Veritaserum has some disadvantages.” Faustine had lifted a box of the same black-red wood from the shelf she’d reached towards earlier. When she opened it, Draco almost cried out at the sense of magic filling the air. The wood of the box must have muffled it before.   
  
The object Faustine lifted out was small enough to fit snugly in the curve of her palm, but it prickled and branched like the chair, and had power that reminded Draco of the repulse he’d encountered from Harry. He could see that it had an outer, round rim, and wondered if Faustine held a carved wheel. But in the center of it, a glimmering jewel flashed. Diamond? Pearl? He couldn’t see, with his eyes gone dizzy and teary with the magic.  
  
“Veritaserum cannot detect lies that the speaker believes are truths,” said Faustine. “And given your reputation for deceiving yourself, I will not chance leading you to Harry, only to see you start back at the last moment and hurt him again. This time, we will make sure that you  _know_  what you really want.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth to say that he hadn’t yet consented to anything other than taking Veritaserum, but Faustine had already blown across the surface of the jewel in the center of the object, and it rose from her palm and hovered in front of Draco.  
  
Yes, it was a wheel, with spokes so sharp that Draco felt his soul recoil at the sight of them. The jewel glittered with an overlay of red, with blue and green and purple crawling behind it, and by that Draco knew it.  
  
It was an opal. Superstition, to hear Muggles talk, and excellent logic and Dark history, to listen to wizards, connected the opal to misfortune.  
  
Then the jewel began to flow as liquid down the spokes of the wheel, tumbling like the cascade of foam turned by a waterwheel. Draco felt himself freezing, his muscles stiffening. His tongue lay heavy and dumb in his mouth. His spine ached with the unnatural position he was forced to keep it in.  
  
“Ah,” said Faustine, no more than a breath behind the words. “Now that you can’t chatter your way out of this, we’ll see what happens.”  
  
Draco wanted to curse her, but the magic paralyzed the words of the wandless, nonverbal incantation that he tried to form in his head. And then the liquid jewel flowing down the turning wheel reared up, smooth and graceful as a snake, and sent forks of light brilliant with the swimming opal colors straight at him.  
  
Pain stabbed through his eyes and his cheeks, and Draco felt a pressure mounting in his head that he knew would quickly knock him unconscious. Even as he struggled against it, the new agony burst like a thunderstorm in his head.  
  
The moment before he fell to the floor, he heard Faustine chuckle darkly.  
  
“That’s the least you deserve,” she said, “to have the truth torn out of you. At least that way we  _know_  you can’t lie to yourself or anyone else, with it hovering in front of your eyes.”


	22. Fortune's Fool

Draco woke slowly, wincing as he laid a hand against his throat. It felt as though he had been running in winter air and trying to swallow knives at the same time. He sat up, and winced again as his head throbbed.  
  
“Welcome back.”  
  
Draco looked up quickly. Faustine sat in a chair across from him, her legs crossed as she sipped a steaming drink from a small silver cup. Her eyes were dark with knowledge, her face creased in lines of calm amusement.  
  
Anyone else in Draco’s position would have looked around for the opal and the wheel. Because he knew Faustine would expect him to do that, he kept his gaze fastened on her instead, and tried to match her tranquility as he sat upright in the chair. A puddle of drool had formed on the table where his chin had rested; he Vanished it without drawing attention to its existence. Then he laid the wand next to him and said, “I want to know what you did to me.”  
  
His voice was remarkably controlled. Draco felt proud of himself for an instant. Then he thought of what Harry would likely say if he were here, and the remembrance of contemptuous green eyes and power that argued down any lie he could present in his own defense sobered him at once. He dug his fingers into the underside of the table to escape Faustine’s sight, almost not caring if he received splinters for the action.  
  
“I did what I said I would.” Faustine inclined her head in a manner that reminded Draco irresistibly of the way his mother had bowed to the Dark Lord when he made a point she disagreed with, the day she died. “Tore the truth from you, and made it impossible for you to lie to yourself any longer.”  
  
“Am I under a permanent trance that mimics the effects of Veritaserum, then?” Again Draco was proud of himself. Severus would have snapped at the notion like a cornered dog; his father would have flown into rages like the madman he was. Draco—Draco Malfoy was cool. He even raised his eyebrows, smiling slightly, inviting Faustine to give him the right answer so that she could share in the joke.  
  
“Nothing so likely to make you think yourself innocent.” Faustine reached down to the chair beside her and lifted something into view.  
  
At first glance, Draco thought it was a fishbowl—at second glance, a Pensieve. Then he realized the silvery sides weren’t solid, and indeed bulged and rippled in such a way that he couldn’t understand what kept them vaguely in place. They seemed ready to flow down the sides of Faustine’s cupped hand as the opal had flowed down its wheel. He pushed himself back slightly from the table, and then made out white letters floating in the middle of the silver. He hesitated.  
  
With his attention, the letters sharpened. He caught a glimpse of the words  _I need Harry Potter_ , and then he snarled and jerked his head back. The words once again became amorphous.  
  
“What have you done?” he asked, and once again his voice was the soulless thing that he knew it needed to be if he was to break Faustine for what she had dared to inflict on him. He had picked up his wand without realizing it, and part of him was regretful for that, because it ruined the subtlety of the threat he wanted to make. But that didn’t matter. He leaned forwards, his hands braced on the table, one digging splinters into his fingernails again. “This is some joke, some trick.”  
  
“Do you know that the Romans discovered some magic they didn’t bother to pass on to their descendants in Latin incantations?” Faustine asked dreamily. “We’re limited by thinking Latin the source of all magic and tracing so many of our traditions back to Rome. The Greeks knew things, in their time, that made Roman civilization look small—as the Senate and the Emperors themselves acknowledged. Speaking Greek, and reading old Greek manuscripts, will get you surprising results.”  
  
Draco sneered. Faustine didn’t deserve even that much acknowledgment from him, but a voice in the back of his head whispered remembrance that she knew how to contact Potter. Maybe if he looked more human, more breakable, more approachable, he would get assistance from her still. Draco was not above manipulating the pity that others might lavish on him. “And yet, you made Rome the theme of your restaurant. It’s plain to see what  _you_  most value.”  
  
“And because you build beautiful houses,” Faustine asked him, her voice almost a sigh, “is beauty the only thing you value?”  
  
Draco tried not to stiffen, but fastened his hands on the edge of the table and said evenly, “Go on.”  
  
“I have learned Greek,” said Faustine. “And I have learned magic in that tongue that is parallel to the magic we’ve learned to wield in Latin and English. The road of Latin and English produced Veritaserum. But that potion has drawbacks. It can’t pull truth from the drinker that he doesn’t know himself, and a determined subject can still lie by omission and by guiding the questions with the truths he reveals. It can’t pierce the truth in the soul.” She nodded to the side, and Draco followed her gaze to see the red-black wooden box on the shelves again. “The Greek magic can, and it brings forth the truth that the Veritaserum drinker would be able to deny, if he was skilled in lying to himself.”  
  
Draco snarled at her. “And of course you would have me believe  _you_.”  
  
“You came here wanting to know where Harry was,” said Faustine. “You seem to have something invested in my truthfulness. And besides—“ She tilted her small silver cup, and Draco beheld the milky sheen to the chocolate in it that he knew came from added, diluted Veritaserum.  
  
“My price,” said Faustine, “for giving you the information that you need to contact Harry, is for you to look into that.” She nodded at the silvery blob hovering beside her. “And never dare to tell me that you don’t believe it, or that you can’t read the wording. It will come clear enough when you lean close and concentrate.”  
  
Draco considered quietly for a moment, his eyes locked on Faustine. He didn’t want to give this woman, who might turn into an enemy as easily as an ally, a glimpse of him acting weak.  
  
Then he remembered that he had fainted in her presence, and from a pain that he shouldn’t have allowed to affect him, even if she had been telling the truth and the magic was tearing the truth out of his soul. She had a low opinion of him for hurting Potter, too. He could not base his decision on what Faustine thought of him, especially when he didn’t have any idea yet if her opinion was worth having.  
  
And whether or not he  _needed_  Potter, himself, he needed the chance to make things right between them. To apologize, if he must. To tell the truth, even, if Potter turned out to demand that.  
  
He gritted his teeth and leaned forwards.   
  
The silvery blob had drifted nearer, probably at a motion of Faustine’s wand Draco had been too occupied to notice. Now the sides were trembling and melting again, quivering so hard that Draco wondered if they would explode on him for a moment. But he felt nothing more than a passing coolness, like the touch of a strand of mist, even when a drop did leap off the fishbowl and brush against his forehead.  
  
And then the letters formed.  
  
 _I, Draco Malfoy, need Harry Potter. I have lived all my life thirsting after him, the only greatness I ever knew—the one figure described to me in fairy tales who sounded as if he might actually live in the real world under the sun. My father’s tales of the Dark Lord made me shiver, but I_  wanted  _Potter. I desired him as other people desire sunlight, or diamonds, or release from poverty._  
  
Draco jerked his head away, but the protest he wanted to make died on his lips when he saw the smile Faustine regarded him with. Draco stared back at the letters again instead, and they surged towards him and crowded on his soul.  
  
 _And then when I met him, and discovered that he was actually nothing like what I’d been told, I decided to punish him for being that way._  
  
Draco sat back with an angry toss of his head, his fingers clutching the edges of his chair. “I was never that way,” he said, whilst the letters dissolved into strands of silver-white like hanging cobwebs.  
  
“Yes, you were.” Faustine’s smile had grown remorseless, which was worse still. “Such a selfish, spoiled brat. You wanted a whole person to satisfy your cravings, when other people would be satisfied with attention, or a friendship. But not you. Not Draco Malfoy. Even if he hadn’t become friends with Ron Weasley, you would have been disappointed, because he was too generous to confine himself to you alone. He had to save others; he had to teach them, and sympathize with them, and be their friend. And you couldn’t have tolerated that.”  
  
Draco felt his lips drawing back to expose his teeth. “You make Potter sound like a saint, and me like a dragon,” he said at last, when he thought he was in enough control of his anger not to simply explode at Faustine. “You must  _know_  that that is not true.”  
  
Faustine ran a hand through her hair, catching it against imaginary curls and tangles there as if she wanted to avoid answering him. Only when she lowered her hand to the table again and fixed him with an even gaze did Draco realize that she might have been subduing anger of her own. It cheered him, but not as much as it would have under different circumstances. Faustine was still the one in control, and he had to yield to her power. He would never be happy as long as that was true.   
  
“I know that Harry has his own faults,” she said. “I shudder to know what this spell would reveal as a glimpse of his soul, actually. But we are talking about  _you_ , Malfoy. And I say that you have the greed of a dragon. You weren’t born with it, no. You encouraged it to grow at every opportunity, and when you had the chance to turn away—as you did when your mother died and you were shocked, for the first time, out of absorption with yourself and into grief—you deliberately recommitted yourself to the selfish path instead. You received multiple warnings, from people concerned with  _you_ , not only Harry, to draw back when you began pursuing him. Of course you did not. The selfishness extended to your opinions. You could not believe that  _you_ , the great and mighty Draco Malfoy, might be wrong.”  
  
Draco snarled and clenched a fist openly in Faustine’s sight. Why not? He had already revealed how much her words affected him. “I could have pulled away at any time I desired—“  
  
“So blind,” said Faustine. “Until you are cured of that blindness, I’ll not let you anywhere near Harry.” She stood abruptly and paced towards the far side of the room, where she stood with her back to Draco. “Take as long as you like to look over the words in that glass, and unobserved by me,” she added over her shoulder. “You’ll need some time to accept what you see, that’s plain.”  
  
Draco glared at her, and then glared at the silvery blob. Nothing changed. The words continued to swim, and he decided that he might as well read them. Why shouldn’t he? He was the one who would decide whether they affected him or not.  
  
He leaned nearer, and the words sprang into existence as if they had been waiting for his eyes. Draco told himself that he had not  _really_  seen any viciousness in the motion. This was magic. It wasn’t alive, it didn’t determine itself, and it was most probably a trick that Faustine had made up. She had said herself that Veritaserum could only pull out truths the victim knew to be truths. Someone had probably lied to her about the real nature of the Greek magic, and she was faithfully repeating those lies to Draco, under the impression that they were true.  
  
 _I could have been free of him. The only rivalry we truly shared was the Quidditch rivalry, and other members of the Slytherin team didn’t hate Harry Potter so much. And we were on opposite sides of the war, but so were other people. They fought for their beliefs, as Potter fought for his; they didn’t fight for hatred of him. And he didn’t fight for hatred of me, as much as I tried to tell myself he did at the time._  
  
A flash of outrage traveled through Draco, but it was transient, because he did indeed remember thinking such thoughts during the war. He’d caught a glimpse of Potter from afar across a battlefield, and thought smugly that those green eyes focused on him for a moment and shone with loathing. Yes, he’d thought he was the reason that Potter drove so furiously at Malfoy Manor during the war, and finally made the most important battle happen there.  
  
The Dark Lord had also been at Malfoy Manor during that same time. Rationally, Draco knew that, and he would have agreed with anyone in public that that was the reason Potter had been so desperate to reach the house.   
  
But in private, he had hugged to himself the secret of Potter’s wartime obsession with him.  
  
Now it lay open and shattered, as pitiful as the limbs of a broken doll Draco had seen lying on the floor in the Malfoys’ cellar once, accidentally Apparated with a Muggle victim. He stared at nothing for long moments before he could look at the blob and convince himself to read on.  
  
 _I could have been free of him. It was my conviction that he_  needed  _to be defeated in order for my life to mean anything that made me cling to my hatred when the war was done. I started training as an architect, but my full heart was never on the job. I kept an eye cocked over my shoulder, wanting to see Potter standing there, wanting to see him be impressed. And when I found out he was, it still wasn’t enough for my hatred of him. I wanted to see him broken for the crime of ever daring to care more about someone else than me, and for the crime of still caring about his job instead of falling worshipfully at my feet when I deigned to notice him._  
  
Draco turned his head. He felt as if he wanted to spit, the liquid boiling up in his mouth and resting against his tongue, but there was no possible way he could spit out his disgust with himself, and that was what really needed to go. He rested his forehead against his palm and closed his eyes for a moment.  
  
 _Did I_ —  
  
But he knew he had really done that. If nothing else, the sense of  _familiarity_  in his chest when he read the words confirmed it.   
  
Familiarity, and a squirming, stinking nausea. This time, when he swallowed, he choked down bile.  
  
He opened his eyes and continued reading, almost certain that he was numb, that no revelation could hurt him now.  
  
 _When I found out he was obsessed with me in return, it was cause for only a moment of joy. I_  had  _to have more than that. I had to have him enslaved to me, twined around me, and softer than it turned out he was. I had to make him break and shatter. If I had achieved my goal, if I had been right about him, he would never have managed to write me the letter that so insulted me in the first place._  
  
Draco sat back and ran his hand across his face. He felt the temptation to stare vacantly into the air nearly overcome him, and shook it off so suddenly that he felt as though an earthquake had run across the territory his shoulders occupied.   
  
 _Blind. I was blind. The blob doesn’t say it, but if I had been right about Potter, and it had turned out he was that soft and pliant, I would have despised him, and despised myself for obsessing over him in the first place. I wanted to be the sun of his universe, but I would have found no satisfaction in being so._  
  
Draco gave a chuckle that sounded hollow and rusty even to him. Again he ran his hands across his face. Sweat had broken out on his brow, but it was cold to the touch, and his fingers shook so severely he nearly poked himself in the eye.   
  
 _This is actually the best thing that could have happened. Now I only need to despise myself for misunderstanding him so greatly, and misunderstanding my own motivations, rather than despise myself for my emotions._  
  
But the blob had said nothing about the way he needed Potter since the first sentences Draco read in it. Maybe there was one thing he hadn’t mistaken. Maybe he was less stupid than he appeared. Draco leaned forwards again, and the words swirled and rushed at him for a vengeance.  
  
 _I’m the next thing to in love with him. I’ll never rest easily until he admires me and returns as much emotional investment to me as I feel in him. Even if I know that he’ll never bow down at my feet, still, the moment of triumph when he let me do as I liked to him in bed was too sweet not to be repeated. I need him beside me if I’m ever going to move on from the obsession with him and think about other things._  
  
Draco sat back and closed his eyes. Then he laughed again.  
  
 _The next thing to in love with him? At the moment, I’m the next thing to broken._  
  
And now he wasn’t numb, but he was alive to pain, and he wanted to know what could hurt him worse than what he had just experienced. He leaned towards the blob, feeling as if he were daring someone to torture him whilst being mentally prepared for it.  
  
There was no more. The letters in the blob melted together and ran down the insides of the silvery walls like hot wax. Then the whole thing burst, and Draco flinched before he could stop himself; the thought of all that truth flying at him was more than he could bear. Nothing touched him this time, however. He caught a glimpse of dissipating streamers of silver, and that was all.  
  
He looked up. When he was laughing and combating the truths the blob had revealed to him in his mind, he had forgotten Faustine was in the room. Now he remembered, but the embarrassment he would ordinarily have felt at experiencing those emotions in front of her was muted and chased away by the fact of his own folly.  
  
 _I could have had everything I wanted. I had the chance. Potter was in love with me already. I could have coaxed him and brought him along, bit by bit, showing him my good qualities until he forgot the bad ones. I’m the one who destroyed this, and not him._  
  
The truth coated the inside of his mouth with a metallic taste, and caused a twinge in his chest. Draco rested a hand absently over the skin there. He wondered if this was what people meant when they talked about a broken heart.  
  
“What happened to the truth?” he asked.  
  
Faustine inclined her head. Her eyes revealed nothing, no matter how hard Draco looked at her. “It will travel with you. Should you start doubting what it revealed, it will reappear.”  
  
Draco’s breath caught, and he stared at her. “And you’re not going to force me to reveal it to Harry?”  
  
“I don’t have that power.” Faustine dropped her eyelids over her eyes and gave a very faint smile. “Greek magic doesn’t turn our unhappy endings into happy ones any more than Latin and English magic does. I could only force you to confront yourself and stop lying.” She considered him quietly, her head on one side and her fingers traveling steadily over her arm. “Harry isn’t perfect,” she said. “I am not one of his closest friends, which means I’m more likely to look at him with my eyes open. But he’s not the one who almost destroyed what you shared together. That’s you. Only when you faced those truths could you come together on a more equal footing. As long as you  _remember_  them—“ her voice sharpened until Draco winced, thinking he felt it dig into his skin “—then you carry only as much guilt as he does.”  
  
Draco said nothing for long moments. It seemed too simple, even after the pain he had suffered to attain it. “And that means you’ll tell me where he is?” he asked.  
  
Faustine raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know his exact location. But he gave me the means to send him news even when he’s isolated, out of the country, or behind powerful wards. We’ll put a special tracking spell I know on the owl.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “Why are you doing this? Do you really have that much invested in our relationship working out?” He stopped the moment he finished speaking the words. A tone of spite had crept into his voice, and if he was unable to stop his stupid, self-destructive behavior, at least he recognized it when it was happening.   
  
“I want to see Harry happy,” said Faustine. “He has done some lasting things for me, and I have rarely been able to repay him with more than temporary information that cools quickly. But, more, this neutralized you.” Her eyes shifted and changed, and Draco wondered if he should be afraid of the emotion that appeared in them now. He thought he might have been, before the pain he suffered in reading the blob. “Now either you will approach him like an adult, and in full cognizance of the information you’ve learned, or you’ll slink away and not bother him again.”  
  
“What makes you think I won’t approach him and make as big a mess of this as I ever did before?” Draco demanded.  
  
Faustine flicked her wrist. A second blob appeared out of the air, paler than the one that had haunted Draco, but with the same words more brightly sketched in it.   
  
“The opal makes two copies,” Faustine said. “One for the person who needs to face the truths of his soul, and one for the person who questions him.” She smiled at Draco’s reluctantly horrified glance. “If you try to lie to him again, I’ll simply send this to Harry. It’s not a foolproof means of solving the problem, no, but I have to at least let you  _try_  to approach Harry.” Her voice showed her reluctance clearly now. “He’ll never be happy until he has you—or until he’s convinced that you’re beyond redemption. And he will be, if you try to hurt him again and then he reads this.”  
  
Draco bowed slowly, never taking his eyes from her. He could admire her, in a way. And he was more annoyed with himself than her, for not facing these truths in the first place. He could have dealt with them privately on his own, if he had known himself as well as he always thought he did.  
  
 _Indeed, that’s the most galling thing_ , he thought, when he stood outside the Imperatrix again, with Faustine’s promise that she would contact him when her owl returned ringing in his ears.  _Everyone was always telling me that I lacked self-knowledge. I ignored them, because they weren’t inside my head and they couldn’t read my soul. And it turned out they were right._  
  
He would have to tell the truth to Potter and endure the prickling touch of truth’s fire on his soul—  
  
Because if he didn’t, then he was likely to be wrong again, and he didn’t think he could survive the shame a second time.   
  
“It was bad enough finding out I needed Potter,” he muttered, and began to walk, feeling, with each step, like a scraped sculpture just emerged from the glassblower.  
  
But he had the chance to escape feeling that way. He had, in fact, the chance to attain everything he wanted.  
  
 _Maybe._


	23. Light, Seeking Light

Harry sat up and mopped a hand across his forehead, grumbling under his breath.  _You’d think I’ve have fulfilled my lifelong quota of nightmares after the visions I had when Voldemort was still alive, but no, of course not._  
  
And this nightmare had been particularly vivid and fearsome. Draco, lying under a heap of dark, crumbling flowers that looked like dead roses, or maybe roses carved from iron, his arm stretched out, his eyes blank and empty. He had died trying to crawl to safety, Harry knew, reaching out for someone who refused to save him.  
  
The way that Harry had refused to.  
  
Harry bit off the end of an exclamation and leaped out of bed. He hesitated when he remembered that he was only wearing pants, then shrugged. No one else was here to see him—Ron had gone back to the Auror Department, in part to keep up with the case—and the windows were all enchanted. No one close enough to be offended, Harry thought with a faint smile.  
  
He wandered out of his bedroom and into the central chamber of the house. Warming Charms kept the chairs comfortable enough to sit in, but Harry felt the need of a fire’s brightness, so he lit one on the waiting logs with a wave of his wand. Then he collapsed in front of it and tried to work out what he was feeling.  
  
He wished he could have done something other than send that letter to Draco, and as good as the revenge had felt at the time—as  _necessary_  as it had been to put his emotions on paper so that he didn’t show up at the Manor and blast Draco’s brains out—still, now he more than half regretted it.  
  
But if he had done nothing, then what would have Draco thought? That he could do anything at all, and Harry would put up with it because he was too weak to defend his own rights. And then Harry thought of the betrayal to the papers again, and anger burned like acid along his veins.   
  
Which didn’t lessen his worry for Draco now. Draco wasn’t a duelist, and the imposter might well go after him when he wasn’t able to find Harry. The imposter struck Harry as mad, but too clever not to realize that it was useless searching for a wizard under the Fidelius Charm when you had an easy target right in front of you.  
  
Harry had tried to talk to Ron about arranging protection for Draco. Ron had looked at him with slitted eyes and hadn’t said anything. Harry had begged harder, and Ron had uttered a martyred sigh and said that he reckoned  _something_  would have to be done, since it wouldn’t look good if the only Auror capable of protecting Malfoy was the one who slept with him.  
  
Ron would do it, Harry knew that. But his prejudice might cause him to wait a few days, either to punish Draco or because he had persuaded himself that the imposter had attacked Harry last, and there was no sign he was about to go after Malfoy now. And those few days could be the chance the imposter needed.  
  
Harry tried to distract himself with thoughts of the stocked library, or the food, or the chance to sleep in, which never happened when he was working on a case. But it was no good. His mind always circled back to Draco, and his muscles trembled with the restless need to be up and  _doing_  something.   
  
 _I wasn’t made to be locked away like some princess in a tower, waiting to be rescued_ , he thought, and stood with a wrench of motion that made his spine shudder for long moments. Then he shook his head and turned for the library after all.  
  
If he couldn’t do anything else, maybe he could conduct research that would help somehow. Unlikely, when Hermione and members in the Auror Department were both devoting their spare time to that research—the Auror Department with extra energy, because the Malfoy case had already earned them enough bad press. But they wouldn’t be able to study one subject with concentrated attention. Hermione had her own job. The Aurors were likely to be called out and tasked with something else before they could get in more than a few hours of reading.  
  
Maybe he could find something. Maybe.  
  
Harry hoped so. At least, that way, he wouldn’t have to feel completely useless.  
  
And it was probably a good idea if he could keep his mind off fantasies of flying to Malfoy Manor,  _making_  Draco understand somehow, and then making love to him until both of them were exhausted and aching.  
  
*  
  
The moment the dream began, Lucius knew it for a dream. He had had it often enough before. He could have shaken himself, hard, and woken from it.  
  
And where would he be then? An empty bedroom, with an empty portrait frame on the wall. At least in this dream he had a chance of seeing the woman who had become his ruling passion when she was dead as she had never been when she was alive.  
  
He chose to stay.  
  
The doors of Malfoy Manor stood open before him, rocking slightly in the midst of a cracked frame. Lucius approached slowly. Charms protected his feet from the intense heat of the ground; he had to stop several times to renew them. All around him, jagged spirals of smoke traced the place of the most violent burnings. Lucius could smell cooking meat; he caught a glimpse of more than one pile of limbs, more than one head taken apart with loving care down to the eyes and the bones of the ear. Each time, he averted his gaze and walked on.  
  
The magic in the air drove him to the floor the moment he crossed the threshold of the Manor. He knelt, shaking, his hands pressing against his head and then his stomach. He was not sure whether the pressure was more severe in his temples or his belly.  
  
At last, though it felt as if he were pushing against the stone of his own tomb with his forehead, Lucius managed to look up and about.  
  
Sketches of black lightning and green seemed to dart about, appearing in the corners of his eyes, vanishing when he looked at them. He learned later that those were the remnants of the magical power that the Dark Lord and Potter had lashed at each other. Broken parts of their wills still wheeled through the Manor. That was what took longest to clean out, when Lucius was rebuilding the house.  
  
The ceiling was gone, at least on the entrance hall. A few of the walls in the distance still bore wobbly pieces. And there was a silence, and the smell of blood, that told Lucius what had happened.   
  
Of course he couldn’t have known it at the time. Of course he thought he did, anyway, in this dream when he was looking into the past. He rose to his feet with an enormous effort, pausing a long time on one knee, and then staggered on.  
  
Silence. That silence stretched along Lucius’s skin until he felt it would have been less painful if wild cats were clawing him apart. His hand tightened on his wand, and his breath came harsh and short. And that also should not have happened; he should have faced the events, whatever they were, calmly. He had to set an example for his son, and he had to prove to the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord that he was still cool, untroubled even by the atrocities that occurred within his own home.  
  
But he could not do it, and then he stepped into a room that was awash with blood, and he saw the dancing figure.   
  
Even within the dream, he could not see it whole and clear. Here a glimpse of a pool of blood that was so thick it lay on the carpet like a puddle of rain that saturated grass hadn’t managed to absorb; here a broken limb, ending in a hand from which the fingernails had been cut out. And in the middle, the dancing figure, whirling and laughing.   
  
Did he see it? Was it only told to him later? Lucius did not remember. He didn’t really think it mattered. If someone had described it to him, they had done a good enough job that he knew exactly what it looked like.   
  
Bellatrix, dancing and dancing, limbs flopping like a scarecrow’s. Blood covering her face in a mask that Lucius knew would pull away in one even coating. So much of it. Her hands, red. Her feet, crimson. Even her eyes, aglow with the reflection of flames really, but seeming as if she had gazed into her own reflection in blood until the blood had moved into her eyes instead, that she might never have to look as far as a puddle to see the color.  
  
She wore, on her back, attached to her, Narcissa’s skin, peeled from Narcissa’s body.  
  
“She will never usurp my place with my lord again!” Bellatrix cackled, her voice gory, as transcendent in its awfulness as her new clothing.  
  
And the dream ended, and Lucius opened his eyes and lay still for long moments. Strange, he thought distantly, how he had thought he had grown used to horror. He had tortured Muggles and seen them tortured, and not flinched. He had condemned former allies on the Dark Lord’s say-so and stood by as the most terrible punishments happened to them—as they were deprived of their wits, turned into creatures half-animal and half-human, raped by werewolves in beastial form. And though he had saved several prisoners when he had begun to doubt the surety of the Dark Lord’s victory, he could have stood by and seen the same thing happen to them without flinching.  
  
The flinching was done inside, and no one save perhaps his wife and son, if they petitioned for it, was invited into his soul.  
  
But he had looked on what had been done to his wife, or heard it described to him, and nearly gone mad.  
  
He was still not used to it. He still dreamed about it, and Narcissa was still gone. Perhaps someone could have helped her if someone had reached her in time—and that was a new horror to linger and torment the mind. For his part, Lucius preferred to believe Severus’s testimony that there was nothing that could have been done for her.  
  
He stood and made his way rapidly to the library. He would read one of his wife’s diaries, in order to be closer to a time when she had lived.  
  
*  
  
Poison-green, emerald-green—  
  
 _(Lily-green, but he would not think of that)._  
  
\--and the surface of the potion shifted once more before it settled into the almost solid, gem-like form, slick and gleaming, that it would hold until Severus added the final ingredient. He drew back his head, aware his eyes were narrowed.   
  
 _(Lily once said he looked like a rat when he was in this stage of brewing. He supposed she would know)._  
  
Rats. His mind glided, and he turned to the cabinet that sat in one corner of the room. The final ingredient of the potion could vary. It only needed to be something powerful, imbued with Dark magic, and obtained under Dark circumstances. An enchanted flower obtained by the dark of the moon would do.   
  
But Severus drew out a single silver hair from the cabinet and held it to the light, turning it back and forth in order to admire the way a shimmer of blackness followed the reflection of the fire. The fire seemed to be aware of it, and to hurry away from it.  
  
Pettigrew had been so self-important, when the Dark Lord assigned him to live in Severus’s house and spy on him. And then Severus had caught him slipping away from the battle, intent on supposedly betraying the Dark Lord to Potter and then, in reality, betraying Potter to him.   
  
Pettigrew stood trial.   
  
But what they tried was not exactly Pettigrew, any more.  
  
Severus wondered, with a faint smile as he dropped the hair and watched it drift into the potion, if Pettigrew would feel this, wherever he was. Of course, what held his attention at the moment was probably far more—interesting. Severus had never had occasion to visit the realm where he had sent part of Pettigrew’s soul himself, but he thought interesting was at the very least a justifiable description.  
  
The hair settled into the potion, and it leaped upwards in a fountain that Severus had already dodged because he had read the book. Slowly, he worked his way back to the cauldron again, sniffing lightly. Yes, it smelled like new-mown hay and the hot sparks flung up from two pieces of flint rubbed together.  
  
 _(Lily had rubbed two pieces of flint together one day when they were children, when she wanted to show Severus that one could start a fire without magic. She had done that, but she had started more than one fire, and she would not have approved the tinder of the other, or known how to put it out)._  
  
The potion settled. Severus counted to fifty under his breath, and then stepped back as a cloud of noxious black gas rose from the surface and hung there like the imaginary rainclouds Muggles were pleased to think hung over the heads of some of their iconic persons. More Potions masters had been destroyed by this gas than by the initial explosion of the potion. Severus tried to imagine what it would have done to Neville Longbottom, and then put the thought out of his mind. He  _did_  enjoy his unbroken rest at night.  
  
The potion was a deep, rich red when the gas dissipated, as if it were made of liquid rubies. Pleased, Severus drew a ladle of it out of the cauldron and held it up until the first few, corrosive drops—at least to human skin—had dripped back into the mass of the potion. Then he empted it onto a golden plate that he’d taken out of the cabinet in which Pettigrew’s hair had been stored, and breathed gently across the surface.  
  
The red liquid stirred, and a shape rose from it, a drifting, cobra-shaped shadow, its hood flaring around it. It examined Severus from nonexistent eyes for long moments. Then it bowed its head and hissed. The exhalation became a long stream of mist, which formed into white letters in front of the snake’s head.  _What is your question?_  
  
Severus waited for long moments, his eyes half-closed, breathing steadily. He hated to waste the question on what he had already decided to ask; now that he had come to this point, he wondered whether it would not be better to ask something else that mattered more to him personally.  
  
On the other hand, now he had mastered the potion, which meant he was certain he could brew it again. It would be best to use it for its original purpose. That done, there was no way Draco could blame Severus for not having done all he could. Severus straightened and thinned his lips before he waved his wand. A small cut appeared in his forearm; the blood dripped out and turned to steam at once on contact with the air, courtesy of another simple spell. Severus healed the cut as the blood-gas drifted towards the snake’s steam and became the words,  _Who is the man stalking Draco Malfoy?_  
  
The snake drew back its head. The hood flared twice, like flapping wings, and the answer emerged in a cascade of white.  
  
Severus stared at it for long moments.  
  
 _Almost himself._  
  
“Well,” Severus said softly, “isn’t  _that_  interesting.”  
  
*  
  
Lucius had found the entry he wanted, and he laid his head against the back of the chair as he read. He was still tired, and if he tried to read sitting upright, his head would inevitably droop on his chest and he would sleep. He might drool, as he sometimes did now that Narcissa was gone, enough to ruin the precious pages of the diary. He would not tolerate even the smallest chances of that happening.  
  
 _I visited the garden tonight, for the first time since Draco nearly drowned in the pond. I walked with my skirts sweeping the earth, my nostrils slightly open and drawing in the scents of the roses. I was determined that I would absorb every scent and sight and sound and touch of this place, to remember it as it was.  
  
After all, tonight it would only exist in my memory.  
  
I wended between long rows of roses, amaryllis, amaranth with its gorgeous red-purple blooms—strange, to think that some magical flowers might be immortal when wizards are not—and the black gladiolus that stood straight like spires of mourning. I heard the calls of nightbirds around me, but I did not heed them. I would have walked the garden as straight-backed and determined during the day; the darkness only made my purpose holier.  
  
I halted at last in front of it, the pool that nearly cost me my son’s life. It was low, and surrounded by a low stone wall, but deep; I could not see the bottom from where I stood on its shore without craning my neck. I was not about to crane my neck.  
  
I stood there, and I remembered the way that one of the house-elves ran to me holding Draco, his head lolling, his lungs still half-filled with water, his face blue and his eyes staring. He chased his reflection in the pool, the house-elf told me, sobbing. An accident that could have happened to anyone.  
  
It should not have happened to my child. The world should know better.  
  
Two long minutes I stood there, and then I lifted my wand.  
  
The earth under the pool tore itself apart, cracking and sucking in the water like a giant drawing breath. The water resisted me; it had lain in that pool for a long time, and age lends its own magical force to such things. But it was nothing against my will, and I made it flow backwards and sink, instead of welling up.  
  
I opposed both nature and Lucius’s own ancestors, who chose to make an ornamental pond out of that spring long ago. I won.  
  
The stone wall dissolved, the stones becoming less than sand, vaporized by the localized fire-curse I hurled at them. Lucius does not know that spell. The flowers around the pool swayed, and wavered, and then gave up their lives, lying down and withering because I commanded them to. I stood rejoicing in their power for some time, my hands spread, the life-force circling around me, and then I filled the bed of the pool with their ashes.  
  
I created a shallow bowl of pure white sand where my son can play, if he chooses, with no worse hurt than might come from getting a few grains of sand in his eyes. And this sand is so fine that it is unlikely to trouble him. The sides of this small pit, which slope upwards now with no trace of wetness to them, are not steep enough to trip him. The ground is level, raked dirt for a hundred feet in any direction. Draco will walk here without crushing greenery underfoot, and also without tangling his feet in vines and being pricked by the thorns of the roses.  
  
The pond is gone. There is no trace that it has ever been there, and the spring, sealed, will reemerge nowhere else.  
  
Nothing that threatens my child shall survive._  
  
Lucius leaned back further and closed his eyes, though not before he carefully shut the diary and put it on a nearby table. He had been utterly puzzled by the disappearance of the pond at the time, and the house-elves unable to account for it, no doubt because Narcissa told them not to. But it had been only a small addition to the gardens and not one he himself had particularly favored, so he had shrugged and forgotten the matter.  
  
Now he wished he had known, so that he could have gone to Narcissa and shown her that her will was appreciated and did not need to be hidden.   
  
There was nothing they could not have done together, the steel and the iron pair, fronting the sun and the moon, despising the Dark Lord.  
  
*  
  
 _Glamours, and their practice, are ancient. It is sometimes believed that the first spell of any complexity created by the oldest wizards, after such simple ones as_  Lumos  _and_  Wingardium Leviosa,  _was a glamour_.  
  
Harry yawned and turned the page. So far, the books that Hermione had promised would be interesting were the sort that was only interesting to Hermione. Harry had wanted to train himself in wizarding culture and history as well as perhaps finding out tidbits of knowledge that would help the Aurors catch the imposter, but he would fall asleep before then.  
  
And this book, which should have been interesting because there were many sinister uses to which glamours could be put, instead retreated into academic distance. Harry turned idly past the concepts of glamours as masks, auditory glamours, glamours that were meant to cover scent and how they did not fool werewolves, the use of glamours in battle…  
  
The book fell open at a worn page. Harry peered listlessly at it, wondering what this would tell him.  
  
 _Glamours and Identity._  
  
Harry blinked and sat up. This might be worthwhile. The Aurors were certain that Draco’s imposter, Malfoy relative or not, had used glamours to increase his original likeness to Draco. Perhaps there were glamours Harry hadn’t read about, ones not often studied, that were complex enough to permit even passage of the bloodline wards.  
  
However, he quickly grew bored again, as the book nattered on about glamours as disguises compared to Polyjuice, and how well glamours would hold up under times of immense strain, and how glamours were often the first spells to give way and reveal a pretender’s identity when magical exhaustion occurred, and…  
  
The only potentially interesting thing was a paragraph near the end of the section on identity. Harry read it faithfully, though he was certain Hermione and half a dozen Auror researchers must have read it before him.  
  
 _Glamours, when used for a long time, are considered one of the most addictive forms of magic. They also interact oddly with the will of the caster, sometimes creating results that are called “undesired,” but which the caster desired in his or her secret heart. Thus a man intending to disguise himself as an ordinary stranger may, in truth, make himself handsome enough to receive unusual notice, because he wishes to have that attention which is granted to the beautiful. Someone wearing glamours for a long time has a higher chance than usual of adopting the part he plays into his being and consciousness._  
  
Harry sighed and marked the paragraph to discuss with Hermione later; she and Ron were planning to visit that afternoon. Then he blew out the candles and went to bed.   
  
*  
  
Draco woke from a dream as faint as a snuffed candle, in which his mother stood above him, a cold hand extended to touch his shoulder. He blinked up at the ceiling in stupefaction, and turned his head to the side. He almost thought he would see Narcissa standing at the edge of his bed, regarding him with the cold, passionless expression that had been her usual mask in life. Draco had never minded the mask. They had understood each other, he and his mother.  
  
He did  _not_  think he would see a nearly perfect copy of himself standing there, and he did not expect the pain that rolled over him with a single utterance of, “ _Crucio_!”


	24. Delays Have Dangerous Ends

The pain lasted for more moments than Draco had known it could last without driving him mad. He felt his spine arch and heard it crack; cold sweat was sliding across his skin and into his eyes without his being able to wipe it away. His hands formed into claws, and he thought distantly what he must look like if someone came into the room, his father, or Severus, or Harry.  
  
Disgust at the thought was perhaps what anchored his mind, so that he was still sane when the pain foamed away and dropped him back into the real world. He lay still, panting, his eyes shut. He had no desire to look on the face of his tormentor, and his mind was already focused on survival. At the moment, staring at a triumphant grin was likely to drive him to say something stupid, and he didn’t want to feel the Cruciatus Curse again.  
  
“You’re so pathetic,” whispered the voice Draco dreaded hearing, his own. Or, no, not quite his own. There were still minor imperfections in it, traces of some other accent, upswings and lilts where Draco would have striven to speak the words flatly and without emotion. “You concealed that great flaw at the heart of you under a glittering surface. You couldn’t have made it obvious, could you? I never knew it was there until I saw you staring at  _him_.”  
  
Common sense demanded that Draco open his eyes then. He needed to be able to see the stranger’s face and especially his eyes, to determine the way he would jump next.  
  
 _If one can determine that with a bloody madman who’s a genius at spells._  
  
He looked. The other Draco was bending over him, staring at him with a look of ugly, open scorn that made Draco wonder what exactly had happened to him in his own world. Draco never would have worn such an expression himself, thanks to the way it twisted his face. This man didn’t seem as vain of his appearance.  
  
 _Then he cannot be me_. That revelation gave Draco the strength to whisper, “What are you going to do with me?”  
  
The mouth-destroying smile Harry had described when the imposter attacked him on the Malfoy grounds widened across his face then. Draco had already steeled himself to accept ugliness, and so he was able not to look away, although it made the imposter look like a snake unhinging his jaw. Draco could see why the imposter might want to take his place, but not why he had a desire to imitate Nagini.  
  
“What you might imagine I’ll do,” whispered the imposter. “Learn what I need to, the pieces of your life I’m still missing, to take your place.”  
  
“What happened to your own world?” Draco asked. “Your own time? Why must you come out of it and assault me here?” He made his voice as neutral as possible. Until he understood more about what the man was capable of, this was no time for playing mental games with him, and certainly no time for insults.  
  
The man started laughing. Draco winced. He had never considered that his own voice could crack down the middle like that, but now he had to wonder if it could. He hated the imposter the more for giving him something so unpleasant to reflect on.  
  
“You would think that,” said the man. “You can’t imagine what you seem like from the outside. The mirror, the flawed mirror that does not reflect perfection, but can be taught better by rearranging the glass.”  
  
Draco lowered his head and stared at his hands as if ashamed. The veins stood out on the backs of them, and his fingers trembled. That strengthened his desire for revenge on the bastard, but it also reminded him that he had to act more subtly than that desire called for. “I don’t understand you.”  
  
The stranger’s hand fell on his cheek. Draco shuddered, but kept his head down and his eyes tamely fastened on the bedcovers.   
  
“Of course you do not,” breathed his voice. Draco, if listening to a recording of it, knew he could not have told the difference between it and his own any more. “There has always been a charming innocence about you. You fretted about what you looked like to other people, with the appearance and the reputation of Draco Malfoy and the Malfoy family, but you couldn’t estimate their perceptions because your own consumed you.”  
  
“I have made beautiful houses that others agree are beautiful,” said Draco, and then bit the inside of his cheek in vexation. He had to tame his pride, or he was not likely to survive the night.  
  
“I know that,” said the imposter. “And I have studied long to have some portion of your talent. But it is not enough. After I have finished the game with you and with Potter, Draco Malfoy will retire from the public life of an architect. He will have made all the money he needs, and you will need to spend time with my family.”  
  
Draco concealed a shudder. “I don’t understand,” he said. “If you wanted to seize my whole life, surely you’d want my career and my love affair with Harry as well.”  
  
“They are flaws in the glass,” the imposter replied calmly. “I was angry at first, when I realized that I could not make them fit myself. You had hidden your obsession with Potter well enough that I was unprepared for it. I could have borne with a casual affair, but your depth of feeling was too much.” He flicked his wand, and Draco arched, screaming without sound, as a coil of fire seized the muscles of his neck and curled around his ribs and down the length of his spine. “But I should not have been angry,” the imposter continued in a meditative voice, exactly as if he hadn’t cast that shocking spell. The words nearly vanished behind a ringing wall of pain, but Draco fought fiercely and made himself remember them and reach them. “I should have realized I could change the glass. And so I will.”   
  
He reached down and smoothed a hand over Draco’s cheek. The spell ended then, and dropped Draco into a shaking, sobbing mess. He couldn’t even feel a spark of shame; he simply had no resources left that would enable him to have hidden this weakness.  
  
The imposter continued stroking his cheek. “I’ll change you,” he said. “You’ll realize the truth before you die. And so will Potter.”  
  
Draco, staring up at him, wondered what made him despair most: the realization that he was completely out of his depth when confronting this man and had no idea what to do next, the fact that he would have to try anyway—  
  
Or the fact that the thought of Harry dying was more intolerable than the thought of doing so himself.  
  
He licked his lips and whispered a few papery words. “I—you could walk through the bloodline wards, but how are you going to find Harry?” He tried to sound interested. The one weakness this madman seemed to have was telling Draco about the ways Draco had disappointed him and the ways he planned to correct it, even if he did it in riddling, obscure language.  
  
“Harry,” said the madman, and his snarl distended his mouth again. “You would call him that.” A flick of his wand, and Draco rolled his head back in sick silence as a rib in his right side broke.   
  
“You need not worry,” the imposter was saying, when Draco could listen again. “What draws the hummingbird but the nectar?”  
  
This time, Draco understood.  _He’ll kidnap me and get his revenge on both of us—by hurting me whilst I’m with him, and forcing Harry to come hunting him so that he can get me back._  
  
“Oh, dear,” said the imposter, in Draco’s own tone of concern, and moved his wand sideways. This time, the rib healed. “I can’t let you have your wand,” the man explained, taking Draco’s hawthorn wand with a humiliatingly easy gesture of his hand, “but I didn’t mean to hurt you so that you couldn’t walk. You  _can_  walk, can’t you?” He stared at Draco in a way that made the question a command.  
  
Draco forced a smile and a nod, and stood. The imposter appeared delighted, and rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment. “There,” he said. “I knew I’d chosen a strong man to replace.”  
  
Draco ducked his head as if in embarrassed gratitude. He knew the plan he would have to follow now: charm the man, and even convince him he agreed with some of his goals, until he had the chance to escape.  
  
He only hoped that would happen before Harry was driven to seek him out.  
  
*  
  
Lucius stood in silence in the doorway of Draco’s bedroom, staring at his son’s empty bed.  
  
He then took three steps into the room, put his hand in the middle of the blankets, and felt the indentation. Draco always slept in the same position every night, though he would have insisted that he didn’t if asked, because he considered it a dangerous habit to develop. The covers had no warmth, and Lucius knew the imposter must have taken his son hostage hours ago.  
  
The wards had not reacted. The potions had not reacted. And yet, Lucius could see a single drop of blood on the pillow where Draco’s head might have rested. There had been violent magic here.  
  
And no reaction.  
  
Lucius closed his eyes and stood still. If Severus stepped through the doorway right now, he did not want to appear weak in front of him. But he was thinking of the other person he might appear weak in front of. Narcissa had a portrait frame in Draco’s room, and she might even use it, for all he knew.  
  
 _I’ve failed. She will know I’ve failed._  
  
But if she could stare at him and make him feel worthless over his failure, she might not do the same thing if he found Draco again.  
  
He turned. Severus did stand in the doorway, eyes on the bed. He looked at Lucius, and said nothing. He did not have to. Lucius turned his head aside as if from a blow.  
  
“How do you plan to fix this?” Few people knew Severus’s voice could sound that flat and unreflective, like a pool of black ice.  
  
“The way that Malfoys have always settled their problems when they have no other choice,” said Lucius. “And sometimes even when they do.” He was impressed by the steadiness of  _his_  voice. “Dark magic.”  
  
Severus unexpectedly reached out and caught his arm. “If you use it, you will go to Azkaban, and Potter is unlikely to speak for you this time,” he said.  
  
Lucius wrenched his arm away. “And Draco is unlikely to return if I do not use the magic. Do you have anything else to say, Severus? Or will you apply your own art to winning him free?”  
  
At once Severus turned on one heel, letting his robes flap behind him like dramatic birds’ wings. If he put as much effort into diplomacy as he did into drama, Lucius thought, feeling weariness descend on him like bindings on his bones, then he would have made friends with Lucius again long ago.  
  
But then, he probably felt no emotion where Lucius was concerned. He simply didn’t want to lose the roof over his head.  
  
And Lucius had more important things to worry about than Severus’s reaction to his actions. He was already mentally preparing himself for the challenge as he went towards his private rooms.  
  
Turning someone inside out physically was one of the most difficult and damaging Dark curses Lucius knew.  
  
Turning oneself inside out  _mentally_  was an order of magnitude more difficult.  
  
*  
  
Severus scraped off a piece of his fingernail and tossed it into the black potion that bubbled in the cauldron. It leaped, a swift motion like the whole of the sample trying to bubble at once, and then collapsed on itself. Severus leaned over the cauldron, muscles still tensed and body still balanced in such a way that it would let him move backwards should the liquid explode. He was not stupid.  
  
But no image appeared on the surface of the potion, as it should have. Severus half-shut his eyes and stood in thought, tapping his fingernails against his palm. The clipped one caught at his skin with a tearing motion that produced a hangnail in seconds; Severus flicked his wand, detached the hangnail, and floated it into one of his cabinets to use the next time he brewed a Theseus’s Fortune Potion.  
  
The Finder’s Potion could not locate Draco and his probable kidnapper, then. Severus remained still for some moments, revising the information that his mind contained about the potion, and then went and fetched the book that contained the original of that information from the shelf, because he was not stupid.  
  
 _The Finder’s Potion is powerful in effect, but limited in scope_ , said the book, the words visible to Severus even through the haze of his own scribbled notes and several dark stains that had come from old cups of tea consumed in silence and lamplight above the pages.  _It can fail in a number of several ways to locate the individual it is aimed at. It has been known to fail when the individual in question is behind a Fidelius Charm. An especially conclusive case of failure happens when the individual has a twin and the brewer has not sufficient distinguished the two in his mind. And, of course, the intrusion of a second copy of the same person, as from a Budding Spell, would cause the potion to fail. It relies on the uniqueness of its target, much as owls do to find the people their letters are addressed to, and an interruption to that uniqueness renders the potion inert._  
  
Severus laid the book on the carpet. His eyes were fixed on the wall as his mind recalled the phantom snake’s answer to his question when he had made the last potion, and what he had known about Narcissa Malfoy—whether she had been the kind of woman who could have borne twins and hidden one of them from her husband—and what he knew about Draco—whether he was the kind of person with the arrogance to cast the Budding Spell, thinking the copy of himself created would perfectly fulfill his desires.  
  
But he had known Narcissa Malfoy, and he knew Draco Malfoy, and he recalled the phantom snake’s answer.  
  
It explained, as well, why the bloodline wards and then the potions had failed to react to the imposter crossing into the Manor. Those wards and potions had been trained to accept Draco’s presence, but not to keep count of how many of him were present.  
  
They would not react, of course, to a second Draco.   
  
*  
  
Harry knew something was wrong from the moment Ron came to lunch with him that day.  
  
Ron avoided his eyes, for one thing, and since Ron was forthright enough to meet anyone’s eyes—in fact, Harry had heard him saying that he thought people who wouldn’t look other people in the eye were either criminals or former Slytherins—that was suspicious. Then he took to clearing his throat loudly whenever Harry paused in the conversation, and starting some other topic hurriedly. Then he took a piece of toast and paced around the house, coming back at last with a crumb-stained book from the library. Hermione had trained Ron, by that time, not to drop crumbs on books.  
  
And then Harry said, “How’s the Malfoy case going?” and the toast fell from Ron’s hand to land on the carpet in a splatter of crumbs and butter.  
  
He tried to cover by clearing his throat again and stooping to pick it up. The house, however, Vanished the mess before he could. Harry had learned by then that the cottage had its own spells that made the food, cleaned the rooms, and dusted the furniture. He could see why the Aurors had made it into a safehouse. It was valuable property, especially in the case of another Dark Lord’s war when the inhabitants might not be able to venture out in search of food.  
  
“Malfoy, mate?” Ron asked brightly, eyes locked on his fingers as they clenched on the arm of a chair. “Why would you ask about him?”  
  
And Harry  _knew._  
  
Radiant rage brought him to his feet, but he kept from strangling Ron by reminding himself that the Fidelius Charm would be destroyed if its Keeper died. He took a long, slow breath, and said, “I was asking about the case, and not Malfoy himself. What’s happened?”  
  
Ron’s face flushed brilliant red, and he stared at Harry with the terrified look of a rabbit corned by Crookshanks. Harry kept up his stare, not looking away. Ron was honest enough to admit the truth—if pressed.  
  
“Mate,” said Ron at last, and closed his eyes. “I swear I didn’t—we didn’t think he would be in danger these first days. The imposter was after you last time, and we thought he’d keep going after you. That’s why the Fidelius, wasn’t it? And the Manor has wards, powerful ones, that Snape, the bastard, was strengthening—“  
  
“Is he dead?”  
  
Harry was surprised he could ask the question calmly when he felt as if he were spinning down into the darkness between the stars, but he did.  
  
Ron jumped as though he’d sat on a pin. “No, no!” he almost shouted, and then calmed down enough to add, “That is, we don’t know. He vanished from his bed in the middle of the night, the git, and didn’t bother to leave anything to tell anyone where he’d gone.” He scowled, and Harry thought he heard him mutter something about, “Always knew that he’d run when he was most needed.”  
  
Harry ignored that entirely. He was not about to get distracted by the grudges that still clustered around the war. “And you think he’s—what? Gone off to some party? When he knows his life is in danger? Isn’t it more likely that the imposter kidnapped him?”  
  
Ron took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said at last, after a loud exhalation. “I can’t make anyone in that damn pile tell me the truth. Malfoy Senior mutters and sneers and tells me he has some kind of spell to prepare, and of course Snape has a shut door between himself and the outside world most of the time  _anyway_. No way am I going to open it just to ask if he’s seen Malfoy.”  
  
Harry had heard enough. If Lucius was preparing some sort of spell, then he was probably trying to find Draco, or perhaps take revenge on his killer. Snape might be doing the same thing. Harry had no doubt the man still hated him, but he also thought he must have cared for Draco; Draco had claimed him publicly as a mentor after the war, which had been one of the reasons Snape hadn’t been executed for Dumbledore’s murder.  
  
And Harry couldn’t bear to remain in the house whilst Draco was in danger, especially with the person who had, in a way, let it happen.   
  
He stood and Summoned one of the Auror robes he’d brought with him. It had enchantments on it that made it fit for battle in a way his ordinary clothes weren’t. After that came the Invisibility Cloak, and Ron stared in frank bewilderment as Harry bundled that up and slipped it into a pocket. As he started to put on the Auror robe, Ron finally seemed to grasp the truth.  
  
“Harry,” he said. “You can’t leave.”  
  
“Really?” Harry asked, his head bowed as he focused fiercely on the way the buttons were done up. If he did that, then he might be able to stop focusing on the images of Draco’s being tortured that flashed behind his eyes. “I have the use of my legs, and the cottage has a door, and I have my wand so I can Apparate. What’s to prevent me?”  
  
“Mate, look, I’m sorry—“  
  
Harry looked up, and Ron shut his mouth when he saw his face.  
  
“You should be,” Harry said, what felt like an age later. “You were part of the reason Malfoy wasn’t assigned protection these first few days, weren’t you?” He felt he was being generous in saying that Ron was part of the reason, and not the whole.  
  
Ron winced, but said gamely, “Everyone really did think he’d go after you first. I don’t like Malfoy, but I wouldn’t wish the kind of fate on him that it seems any victim of this lunatic is likely to get.” And then he took a deep breath and stepped forwards, clamping his hands on Harry’s shoulders. It had been years since he did that, since Harry’s breakup with Ginny, and it startled Harry into paying attention.  
  
“I didn’t make the recommendations that I should have,” Ron said steadily. “But neither did anyone else. We did think you were in more danger, Harry, and Malfoy himself refused protection when we offered it. You know the trouble he had accepting any Auror guard in his house but you.” He wrinkled his nose. “And I think he only accepted you in the first place so he could accuse you of seducing him.” He shook his head and spoke on before Harry could interrupt. “I think you should stay here where you’re safe. Kingsley has the best Aurors in the department working on this already.”  
  
“ _I’m_  the best Auror in the department,” Harry said.  
  
“Mate, no one really thinks you should be working on this,” Ron said. He added encouragingly, “You don’t yourself, if you think about it.”  
  
“Yes, I do.” Harry shook Ron’s hands off with a neat twist of his shoulders. “I want to rescue Draco. I owe him for vanishing in the middle of an investigation—“  
  
“Goddamn it, Harry, you don’t—“  
  
“Because I should have been able to overcome my feelings, if I was an adult,” Harry said, raising his voice, “and get past what he did to me. That would have shown him who was the stronger man, so it would have been the best revenge, too.” Ignoring his own conviction that he couldn’t possibly have remained near Draco at the time, he added, “And imagine what you would feel if it was Hermione who’d been kidnapped, Ron. Could you remain still?”  
  
Ron’s eyes wavered, but he said, “Hermione’s never hurt me the way Malfoy hurt you, even when we had  _spectacular_  fights—“  
  
Harry leaned forwards. “Then imagine if your obsession had been kidnapped,” he said, softly, fiercely. “The woman you told me you were ready to sacrifice your life for, even though you only saw her, didn’t  _know_  her. Could you sit by and let that happen? What would happen if you heard she died? Wouldn’t you feel like killing yourself?”  
  
There were long moments when Harry felt Ron teetering on a dagger-point. He wasn’t breathing, his eyes fixed past Harry’s head on something only he could see. Harry remained still, knowing he had already done all he could to affect the outcome.  
  
And then Ron exhaled sharply and said, “Right. You have to go after him. But I’m coming with you.”  
  
Harry grinned hard enough that his jaw hurt and his teeth ground together. “I never expected anything else.”


	25. Valiant and So Cunning

Draco kept alert as they Apparated in short, shaky jumps, his body limp and unresisting, as if the pain curses that the imposter had cast on him had taken all the fight out of him. It was all he could do for now, at least until they came to a place he recognized.  
  
They didn’t. For one moment they were on downs, with a stream of clouds blowing over them, southwest into a brilliant sky; then they were in a green meadow dominated by an orchard of apple trees; then they were in a shimmering flat land honeycombed with lanes and ditches. Draco knew that the constant Apparitions would throw off pursuit. There were spells that could sometimes track the presence of a single person’s blood or wand, but they needed some time to work uninterrupted by yet another leap. The main reason that this technique wasn’t used more often to evade that kind of pursuit was simply that most wizards didn’t have the magical strength to use it and keep using it.  
  
 _But he does._  
  
Letting his head slump sideways so that the stranger had to take some more of his weight, Draco let his gaze linger on the other’s face. A perfect copy of his own, the way he had seen it so often in mirrors and  _Daily Prophet_  photographs announcing the construction of some new house. The relaxed, contemplative mouth, the shining, restless eyes, and the way the blond hair curled around the edges of his forehead, over his ears, down almost to his cheek.  
  
 _He’s taken all that I treasure about myself and made it into his own. I hate the idea of that._  
  
But Draco paused when they reached another Apparition landing spot, this one hotter than the rest—so hot that Draco wondered for a moment if the man hadn’t Apparated them out of Britain altogether—and sweat formed along that perfect brow. The stranger snarled a little and cast a spell that wiped away the sweat.  
  
As they leaped again, whirling into darkness, Draco frowned slightly. Yes, that was a spell he would have cast on himself, though generally  _before_  he arrived at a party or interview and had to deal with it marring his forehead. But the attacker had reacted as though he thought the existence of sweat an imposition.  
  
As if he had really believed the façade that Draco tried to present to the world, the idea that he never sweated.  
  
Slim as the evidence was to base such a far-ranging conclusion on, Draco absolutely and utterly believed what he thought of in the next moment.  
  
 _He isn’t really imitating me. He’s not imitating the way I behave in private moments—and that’s one reason it’s taken him so long to perfect the imitation. He’s basing his copy on the picture I present to the world, the perfection that he probably lost his heart to._  
  
Draco could not really blame anyone for losing their heart to the image he tried to cultivate, though he could have wished the loss would manifest in slavish devotion like Harry’s original obsession and not lunacy that insisted on replacing him.  
  
 _But that means I have weaknesses and flaws and—and strengths, maybe, too—that he doesn’t know about_. It required a heroic effort for Draco to decide that something he’d tried to hide was a strength, because if it had been surely he would have displayed it to others, but maybe it  _could_  be true if he looked at it critically.  _I still might be able to surprise him._  
  
If only because this meant that his enemy wouldn’t have such a hopelessly great advantage over him after all, Draco found himself in favor of this insight. And determined not to show it, as time passed and they leaped rapidly from spot to spot, rapidly enough to make him seasick.  
  
*  
  
Lucius took a deep breath and released the metal spiral that balanced on one of its ends in the middle of a red mist conjured from his blood. If he had mastered the spell that he needed to find Draco and the imposter, the spiral would balance without prompting and rotate, stirring the mist up into a boiling steam.  
  
The metal shuddered and pivoted twice—and then fell over. The mist at once scattered, the way that the house-elves did when they knew Lucius was in a mood.  
  
Lucius took a deep breath and clenched his fist, opening the shallow slash that ran across his palm. Of course, he took care that the blood he shed that way should fall into the flat dish he had ready for it. No sense in wasting perfectly good blood.  
  
 _You knew this would be difficult_ , he reminded himself.  _And though you know Draco better than he knows himself, you don’t know him perfectly. Still less do you know the man whose mind you’re trying to comprehend absolutely. Add those difficulties to the problem of trying to shed your own sense of self, and it’s remarkable that you’ve got as far as you have._  
  
He half-shook his head, then took up his wand and began to conjure. The red blood-mist crept again out of the dish. The blood would provide the connection between him and Draco, and,  _theoretically_ , if he could master the spell, it would enable him to hone in on two nearly identical minds—Draco and the imposter—but then determine that one of them was not his son, due to the blood connection, so he could focus on the other. Once he knew that second man perfectly, mind and impulses and emotions and ideas, then he could find him.  
  
But he must suppress his own sense of self in exactly the right moment, so that he could seek the pair out—for which he would need his intellect, the sense of Lucius, to interpret the blood magic—and yet locate the man—by becoming him.  
  
If Lucius had not been confident he knew his son and that the imposter was just a variation on him, he never would have tried this.  
  
He sighed, and began again.  
  
*  
  
 _If I had not used the hair from Pettigrew, this might be a good use for it._  
  
But Severus did not listen to his own thoughts as his fingers flew over ladle and stirring rod, star-shaped crystal and scrapings from the hoof of a white stag, crushed powder from purple iris and white iris, feathers from a black swan and a blackbird.   
  
These were the tools of his trade, and he fancied that he wielded them every bit as effectively as an Auror wielded his wand. And more effectively, if that Auror was Potter.  
  
He was creating a potion that he would have ruined if he had stopped and hesitated, if he had thought about it. Instead, he tossed the ingredients in, and when he might have forgotten what came next, his muscles remembered. So many things tossed into the potion, so many bubbles conquered and sent back into the liquid, so many explosions averted, so many moments passing winged and then leaping over his head and losing their wings as they fell into the abyss.  
  
 _(Lily would have said something like that. Maybe he had adopted the image from her, never knowing it. Maybe he had heard the image from a poem she read him, during those days when they had lain with their heads together on the grass in the sunshine, and Lily had a book on her lap—she always had a book, it was the only way in which she and Granger were alike—and read in a dreamy voice, whilst Severus dozed with his eyes shut)._  
  
Moments and moments and moments, and then came the moment when the potion thudded in its cauldron like a living heart and the magic paused and looked at Severus expectantly, because this was the addition to the potion that must be made by human heart and will, and the part where it fell apart for so many brewers.  
  
Severus closed his eyes.  
  
And to him there came the moment when he crouched above the remains of the Potters’ house and realized that the Dark Lord had not kept his word, had not spared Lily in his hunt for vengeance on the child who was marked to defeat him.  
  
 _(You were a fool to think that he would. What was a promise to someone such as him? No, do not call him someone. He was not a person by the end, everything that made him human eaten by one snake or another, ambition or pride or greed or vanity or hate)_.  
  
He had seen her, waving red hair as dark as the spilled blood in the moonlight—for though the Dark Lord might have killed her without a mark, she had been hit and her arm partially crushed in the backlash of the rebounded Killing Curse, and so the blood flowed from a wound high on her shoulder. But it could not hurt her, Severus knew that. She had been dead by the time the wound was inflicted.  
  
So he told himself, and so he had gone on telling himself down the years, so that he would not have to live with the nightmare of thinking she had suffered before she died.  
  
But now he forced himself to remember that pain, and to dwell on the anguish that Lily must have suffered when she stood before her baby, trying to fend off the Dark Lord with the power of a sacrifice that she could not have known would work, not for  _certain_. Lily had always wanted other people to think she was certain, but she doubted often; it was a great flaw in her character, to lie and pretend to absolute assurance when she was in an agony of doubt.   
  
Severus thought, and he thought of the woman who was not alive any longer, and he thought of the part he had played in making that come true, and he bound it up with the bitter regret and hatred that had come from his killing of his greatest mentor and the fact that even _that_  had not been enough to earn him the high place in the world he had always craved, and he flung all that emotion together into the potion waiting for him in the cauldron, joining potential and reality.  
  
The liquid roared, and Severus was lifted from his feet by the force of the explosion. He expected it, this time, and made no effort to dodge as he was flung into the wall. By the pressure of heat and air against his face and chest, he knew how strong the potion would be.  
  
It was mighty. He almost lost consciousness, and when he looked again, the potion was perfect, the shade of a ripe tomato, settled back into a ball of shining liquid that looked almost solid. Severus felt his lips move in a smile, and his fingers feathered through his hair, gathering the blood, whilst his tongue collected blood off his lips in turn.  
  
There were few Potions masters who could boast that they had created a perfect Curse Potion. Either they didn’t have the right sort of wild abandon during the creation process, or they couldn’t summon the violent hatred needed to power it.  
  
But Severus had never doubted his ability. This was one thing, he thought as he floated the cooled ball of potion out of the cauldron and then surrounded it with a large, circular glass vial that he kept for such purposes, that leading a life of self-loathing was good for.  
  
The Curse Potion would cause a fate exactly as bitter for the person it struck as the emotion that Severus had invested it with.  
  
Severus thought that a fitting fate for the man who had dared to harm Draco, who had wounded Potter, and who, if he succeeded in killing one or the other, would ensure Severus was subjected to the endless wailing lamentations of the other for all eternity.  
  
Of course, he needed to be close to the target to use the Curse Potion. And that meant he needed to go and find Lucius, who would doubtless be preparing some heroic measure to locate Draco and his follower.  
  
Severus preferred to leave the heroics to others.  
  
 _(Do you? asked Lily’s voice in his memory. But you wanted others to honor you for being a hero so badly.)  
  
I know better now_, Severus answered.  
  
 _(But you wanted to be a hero for me.)  
  
And you are dead._  
  
*  
  
Harry and Ron had no trouble gaining access to the Manor. Neither Lucius Malfoy nor Snape were there to stop them, as if they didn’t care that anyone else entered now that the imposter had broken the wards for the last time and taken Draco, and so the Aurors were swarming all over Draco’s bedroom, casting spells that would identify the magic last used there, discussing different tracking strategies, and standing in knots and whispering to each other.  
  
 _Of course they are_ , Harry thought, bitterly, crouching so that he could put one hand on the edge of the bed. There was still an indentation in the pillows and blankets; he had known that Draco slept in the same place every night, but he had never realized that it would mark the place so permanently.  _Now that it’s too late._  
  
And then he shook his head and shook out bitterness with it, because that wouldn’t help him track Draco, and everything that wouldn’t was useless right now. He turned to Ron. “Has anyone discovered anything?”  
  
“Nothing,” Ron admitted reluctantly. “They still have no idea how he got through the wards; he seems to have walked straight through, and so they can’t identify any magic that way.” He spun his wand in his hands and stared at the conjured bed Harry had slept in as if his carelessness seemed more real to him, now that he was at the scene of the abduction. Harry hoped it did, allowed himself to entertain that vicious hope for one moment, and then thrust it as viciously away, so that he had a chance to concentrate on what really mattered. “Harry—there’s a good chance that we’ll never see him again. Even the tracking spells are failing. They think the imposter must have taken him through multiple Apparitions.”  
  
“He’s strong enough to do that, yes,” Harry said, distracted. His mind had returned to the night that he confronted the imposter on the Manor’s grounds. His breathing slowed as he contemplated it. Almost,  _almost_ , the man had perfectly imitated Draco. Harry might even have succumbed to his seduction, because the image that faced him was so much like what he wanted from Draco.   
  
But he had known the difference. And how?   
  
 _The same way I knew the difference when the imposter was committing lesser crimes._  
  
He spun to face the bed and strode up to it. Some of the Aurors fell back in shock, startled by his decisive motions, and then two of them recognized him and scowled. Harry heard more than one person ask, “What’s  _he_  doing here?” Doubtless they felt that Draco’s former conquest shouldn’t be the one tracking him.  
  
But who did the saving didn’t matter nearly as much as the saving itself. Harry took a deep breath and let his hands rest in the indentation Draco’s body had created again. He had never done this before, and he was no expert in magical theory, not like Hermione. He didn’t have the ideas to support or explain what he was doing, only a vague hope.  
  
But he had always been able to sense the wood of Draco’s wand, and use it to differentiate him from the imposter. No one had said so far that they’d found Draco’s wand in the bedroom or anywhere else. The imposter had probably seized it, confident that he’d make the deception faultless by using it after he killed Draco.  
  
It remained to be seen if Harry could track it.  
  
Eyes closed, he cast one of the tracking spells that was supposed to trace an Apparition and concentrated as hard as he could on the silent song of the hawthorn wand whilst he did so.  _Remember what it feels like. See that pattern of vibrations in your mind. See the wood gleaming. You know what it looks like. You know what it sounds like. You know the small notch near the bottom that makes it press unevenly into your palm. You know it as well as that imposter knows Draco. Come on!_  
  
But the spell reached out uncertainly and then faltered, and Harry received no impressions back from it. He heard someone laugh. He gritted his teeth and concentrated, this time, on the feel of the wand alone. He had never tried to find it at a distance, no, but there was no reason he  _couldn’t_. Ollivander had been vague when he identified the connection between the woods of wands to Harry; it was less understood than the  _Priori Incantatem_  effect that had made his wand and Voldemort’s brothers, being rarer. It might be capable of nothing, or anything. Harry chose to believe the latter.  
  
 _You handled this wand. You know it. And it bonded to you, it was familiar to you, it was the wand you battled Voldemort with. You can find it anywhere, across distances, the way you always knew when Draco had entered a room just from the reactions of the other people in it, just from the prickle of hair along your skin. You know the imposter took it. You remember the song. You—_  
  
And  _there_  it was, the faintest prickling from a direction that made no sense until Harry found he had opened his eyes and whirled around to face it, pointing unhesitatingly with one finger at the far wall. South and west, was the direction of his finger, and south and west, the vibrations of the wand beat and sang faintly in his head.  
  
The other Aurors watched him, some of them raising their eyebrows, but for the moment no one was trying to interrupt him. Harry took a few steps forwards, his nostrils quivering, his body following the pull of his finger. He waited a moment to see if the direction would change; if the imposter was undergoing multiple Apparitions, then Harry’s finger might only indicate his present location.  
  
But the finger stayed firm for a minute, and so did the sense of the hawthorn wand’s song. Harry took a deep breath and let it out again, his hand dropping and his fist clenching.  _That’s it, then. I know I can follow it, though I’ll have to use multiple Apparitions myself._  
  
But it meant that he would have to give up his plan for Ron to accompany him, because he wasn’t strong enough to make that many leaps and take someone along.  
  
“I have to go,” he told Ron. “Will you tell Kingsley that he should go southwest if he doesn’t hear from me in a few hours? I’ll try to rescue Draco and bring him back as soon as possible, but you know what that imposter’s like as a fighter. I—“  
  
“Are you  _mad_?” Ron’s face was so pale that the freckles stood out on it like blood on snow. “Hermione and Kingsley would both never forgive me if I let you put yourself in danger like that! I’ll come with you, Harry. And we should wait at least some time for Kingsley to be appraised of the situation—“  
  
Harry shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t wait for anyone,” he said. “The longer we wait, the more likely that he’ll be hurt.” Ron still hesitated, and Harry’s voice welled towards a shout, though he hadn’t meant to do so. But someone who stood in the way of his rescuing Draco, even if innocently in the way, had to be dealt with. “Ron, I  _have_  to. I’m the only one who has enough magic and cares enough for Draco to rescue him—“  
  
“Harry—“  
  
“You are wrong, Potter.”  
  
Harry snapped around. Snape stood in the doorway, his arms folded and his robes flaring dramatically about him as always. This time, Harry was certain it had to be a spell, because he was standing still. Behind him, Lucius Malfoy stood, his lips set in a thin line that made Harry think he knew what the real source of the difference between him and his son was, for all that they had such similar faces. Draco would never let anyone see him looking like that. He was more controlled than his father, though Lucius had had a longer lifetime of practice.  
  
“Why are you here?” Ron snapped at Snape. Harry didn’t think he wanted to know so much as he was happy to have someone to blame for a problem. “How did you know that Harry had indentified a way to find the prat?”  
  
“I felt the magic go through the wards.” Snape’s eyes sought Harry’s, and Harry could no more look away from them than he could during those times when he hadn’t finished his homework in Potions. “You can find him? Draco?”  
  
Harry nodded. “But I was telling Ron that I’d have to go alone, because it’ll be multiple leaps, and—“  
  
“And by the time you get there, you’ll be too tired to fight.” Lucius pushed his way into the room. Behind him was what looked like a large glass ball filled with red liquid. Harry blinked at it, and then forgot about it as he looked at Lucius’s face. All notion that he could deny the man a chance to go with them withered and died when he saw the pinched edges of his expression. “I know the country around Wiltshire. I know what lies to the southwest. I can give you Apparition coordinates along that path, and we will go together.” The motion of his hand included Snape, himself, Harry, and, surprisingly enough, Ron. “No other will I trust,” he added, and flung a scornful glance at the room full of Aurors.  
  
One of them tried to intervene, but Ron spoke sharply to him and made him shut up. Harry, his eyes fastened to Lucius’s, said, “And what happens if it turns out that one of those Apparition points lies out of the main path we need to follow?”  
  
“Then you’ll feel it, won’t you?” Lucius’s head came down like a wolf’s; his smile was a wolf’s, too. “And you’ll be able to tell us to correct our course.”  
  
Harry didn’t pause before he nodded. Yes, this was better than he had hoped for. And it only made sense to take allies along, and to conserve his strength for the moment when he faced the imposter, because he was sure he would be the one who needed to use his magic to defeat the genius madman.  
  
He had to use a lot of common sense, though, to subdue the part of himself that would have liked to be Draco’s sole rescuer, charging heroically into the evil Dark Lord’s lair and drawing him back to his feet, and saying—  
  
And then he remembered that he was in a room full of arguing Aurors who would probably try to stop him if they knew what he was thinking, and his best friend watching him expectantly, and a man who was concerned for his son.  
  
And a man who watched him mockingly, even now, with his Legilimency telling him exactly what Harry was thinking.  
  
Coughing, Harry turned to Lucius and lowered his voice. “Can you lower the wards to let us Apparate out and then raise them again to cage these fools? I don’t want to take an army. He’ll hear us coming.”  
  
“For many reasons,” Lucius murmured, “I would prefer not to take an army. Come, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Severus.” And he leaned close to whisper a description of the first set of Apparition coordinates.  
  
Only later, after they had Apparated twice across Wiltshire, did Harry start thinking about  _why_  Lucius and Snape might not want to bring an army.  
  
And to start looking suspiciously at the glass ball of red liquid that hovered behind Snape’s shoulder.  
  
And at Snape’s narrow smile.


	26. Unto a Feast of Death

The final place they landed was as gloomy as Draco had expected it to be. It was no wonder, he thought, looking around critically, that the imposter longed to adopt Draco’s life as his own. At least Malfoy Manor had  _light._  
  
And so did this place, as Draco saw a moment later when the imposter waved his wand and the lamps and torches around the room all took fire at once, a spell that Draco had never learned but would like to. Of course, perhaps it was the walls that had been prepared and not the lamps and torches, in which case the magic was less impressive and only a variation on a spell that Draco knew. He adjusted the hang of his robe on his shoulders, not condescending to look at the stranger as he steered Draco through the room with a hand low on his back.  
  
“This is the place where you’ll stay,” said the stranger, and then propelled Draco into another chamber that he likewise lit with a flick of his wrist. “I hope—that is to say, I  _do_  know you’ll enjoy this.” His voice wavered for a moment, increasing the differences that Draco saw between the man and himself, and then firmed again. “It’s exactly like your room at home, after all.”  
  
And it was, down to the material of the curtains on the bed—though given the heavy stone walls Draco had seen in the first room, he was sure the window was enchanted, rather than looking out over a real view of green lawns and trees. He paced forwards and halted, staring down at the bed. He had only meant to stroke the pillows and give some sarcastic comment about how much work the imposter had put into an inferior imitation, but he had seen an image of his own body’s indentation in the mattress.  
  
“It’s yours,” said the imposter. “Not only  _like_  yours. It’s yours.” His voice held a reverence that frightened Draco more than the threats he’d heard so far, perhaps even more than the Cruciatus he’d suffered whilst still at home.  
  
He glanced over his shoulder and met the shining, fanatic eyes of his captor. They stared at him, and yet past him, as if the real Draco was only the embodiment of the abstract ideal that the imposter served. Draco opened his mouth to comment on that, and then took a deep breath.  _Remember that you don’t want to make him angry._  
  
“You’ve tried hard to make this exactly like mine,” he said. “Why?”  
  
“It has to  _be_  yours,” said the imposter, and leaned forwards. “It has to be yours, because I have to be you.”  
  
Draco lowered his eyes. “You’ve said things like that,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’m too stupid to understand what you really mean.”  
  
“You’re not stupid,” said the imposter indignantly, and for a moment his wand moved in a dangerous figure-eight pattern. “Would I have chosen to become someone stupid?”  
  
 _Noted_. Draco had assumed denigration of himself and praise of the imposter’s superior powers would please him, but it didn’t seem so. Nevertheless, the failure had taught Draco an important lesson, and no permanent harm had been done.  
  
“You wouldn’t, I see that now,” said Draco, and then turned in a circle, letting a frown slowly appear on his face, as if he had just now noticed something missing.  
  
“What is it?” The imposter hopped backwards in front of him, anxious attention fixed on his face. “What do you need? What can I get for you?”  
  
 _Yes, he does want to please me, in some odd way. Of course, all that leads to pleasing himself, because he can’t—become—me if he doesn’t understand the way I think and can’t incorporate that into his own behavior_. Draco dropped his arms and turned to face the man squarely. “The bed that Harry conjured to put in my room,” he said. “It’s been there for more than a week now, and yet you don’t have it here yet. Why is that?”  
  
The imposter whitened to the lips and glided a few steps closer, lowering his voice impressively. Draco didn’t allow himself to move or show fear; he knew it would only encourage the other man to persist in his threats.  
  
“Your obsession with him is a flaw in you,” the man whispered, “a crack in the glass, to be scoured away. I won’t have the bed here, reminding you of him. You should have cast him out of your own mind when you gave that story to the papers, but it’s too obvious that you _haven’t._  Brooding, moping…why can’t you see that your own perfection is worth far more than he could ever give you?”  
  
Draco spent a moment marveling. It seemed to him that this man was far more in need of the scolding and the awakening that Faustine had given him than he was himself.  _I wonder if she knows of his existence, and what she would say if she could see him now. He likes me the way I was, or at least the way I was convinced I was, not giving a damn about Harry except for my desire to humiliate him._  
  
“I—I reckon I can understand you,” he said, when he became aware the imposter’s eyes were fastened on him once more. He bowed his head and spoke with abject humility, though he kept a sting in the back of his voice, because the imposter wouldn’t believe complete surrender; he would only be sure that Draco was hiding something. He must see that Draco resented the fact that the other man was right. “I have acted pathetic since I became involved with Harry—“  
  
“Call him Potter,” said the stranger. “I like the sound of your voice when you say the name that way.”  
  
“Potter,” Draco spat, and even gave the name an extra bitter twist, for the stranger’s sake.  
  
The man trembled and moved towards him, one hand rising so that it cupped Draco’s cheek from a distance of several inches. His eyes fluttered as if someone were sucking him off. “Yes,” he whispered.  
  
“I understand why you want to become me,” said Draco, and he opened his eyes a bit wider, nudging his voice by reluctant turns into a questioning lilt. “But why did you decide that you wanted to become me in the first place? Why not be whoever you were?”  
  
“I  _am_  you now,” said the imposter, and his mouth twitched. His wand rose in his hand and traced a pattern that looked to Draco like the branching notation of a musical scale, though since his attention to the stranger’s wand was so strict, he had to admit he wasn’t certain of that. “Or I’m going to be, as soon as I scour out the flaws in the glass.”  
  
Draco had some idea of what he meant by that now.  _He wants to make me over into his image of perfection. And he probably also does command Legilimency, and he’s going to take what he doesn’t understand from my mind, since he can no longer count on his observation._  
  
No matter what, Draco knew he had to prevent the imposter from entering his head that way. Severus had described what could happen when an inelegant or careless Legilimens tried to read information from an unwilling mind. The sensation of rape was the least of it; Draco could lose memories, sanity, intelligence, or his mental integrity.  
  
And the only way he could see to prevent that was compliance.  
  
He moved towards the imposter, who looked a bit uncertain, his wand rising as if he would stick it into Draco’s chest or throat, but let him come. Draco halted in front of him and did his best to adopt a demure look. He knew his mother had been able to do that considerably better than he could, well enough to fool his father into believing that she truly cared for him. “I understand, yes,” Draco whispered. “And I—I want to help you.”  
  
Slowly, joy began to nibble at the edges of the imposter’s face. But he didn’t lower his wand yet. Draco felt a weird sense of pride, seeing that. At least the man who had chosen to imitate him, and even to try and take his place and his life, wasn’t stupid, either.  
  
Draco had nearly abandoned the idea that this man was a variation of himself from another time. He wouldn’t have had to work so hard on the voice, for one thing, and the tactics he undertook, while clever, were not ones Draco could see himself adopting. It also seemed odd that he wouldn’t see the advantages of having a powerful and utterly devoted lover like Harry; Draco would certainly have tried to retain Harry as well as his father and the Manor if he had ventured into another world and found a version of himself there.  
  
No, it was more likely that he was a true imposter, and had had to build up the cunning and skill he had used to get this far. That would explain why he didn’t have the native understanding Draco thought no portion of himself, no matter how inferior, could be entirely without. And he was not  _smarter_  than Draco, or at least not smart in the same ways.  
  
“You want to help me,” said the imposter, calling Draco’s attention back to the present. “How? Really?” He traced his wand in a line that would have traveled from Draco’s forehead down to his nose if it were touching his skin, passing between his eyes. Draco held his breath as he would have if the wand were really touching him; he didn’t think it was much less dangerous, having it an inch or so away. “You must know that when I take your place, you’ll cease to exist as an independent person. You’ll be perfected and resurrected instead, made over into the ideal.” His voice held a sturdy pride.  
  
“I know that,” said Draco, and then summoned more courage than he had known he possessed and raised his hands until they cradled the imposter’s cheeks. “But maybe I’m tired of feeling inferior. Maybe I’m as exasperated with my  _Potter_  obsession as you are. Maybe I want to be free of it. But I can’t trust myself to win me free. I knew my capacity for obsession so much less than I thought I did.”  
  
“You could crush your infatuation with him only to have it rise again,” the imposter said, his breath coming faster and faster, leaning towards Draco and letting his breath rake over his face. It was scented like Draco’s own, and it followed the same pace and rhythm; Draco hadn’t even noticed the imposter adjusting his breathing to do that. Draco felt the world twist for a moment as he wondered if he was looking at a separate person at all, or into some warped mirror.  
  
 _No! That’s the way_  he  _thinks. If he once convinces you to start thinking the same way, then Severus would have the right to laugh and turn his back on you as an unworthy student of the logic he tried to teach you. You don’t want that to happen, do you?_  
  
A few deep breaths, and Draco had braced himself again. He was thinking the way he should be, the only way he could in this situation in order to survive, fast and clear and powerfully. He gazed dreamily into the other man’s eyes and nodded. “That’s exactly it. I’ve tried to rid myself of this twisted obsession before, and nothing worked. Not ignoring Potter, not trying to concentrate on my career, not telling myself that he was only a hero and what did I have to do with heroes? And you won’t even have my career when you take my place.” Draco let his voice dip into true sorrow. “I don’t want the same fate to happen to you. If I can’t be free of the flaws that seam me, at least you might be, and stand in a place of honor I can’t manage.”  
  
The man grabbed Draco’s hands and licked his wrists, rubbed his face into his palms, and closed his eyes ecstatically, like a purring cat. Draco felt faintly ill. He had no need to see a face that looked like his own violated in that way, by such  _acceptance_  of a simple gift from another person.  
  
Then it occurred to him that he would probably look like that, when—and if—he told Harry the truth and when—and if—Harry gave him a second chance. He could imagine himself gazing in mindless adoration at the green eyes of the man he was in love with—  
  
 _Now is not the time to worry about that_ , he thought, and gave a push that sent the vision spinning to a far corner of his mind. The imposter was speaking again, anyway, and Draco knew that he daren’t miss a single word.  
  
“Thank you,” he said. “I knew you would see sense in the end, because you’re too perfect not to, but I was afraid I might have to torture you into it.” The casual way he spoke the words chilled Draco. Torture had never been casual for him, even in the Dark Lord’s service. He had imagined the way Harry’s eyes would look at him when he heard about each crime. “I can show you what to do now, and give you the gift of knowledge, instead of only taking it from you.”  
  
Draco forced himself to smile. He had no idea if anyone would come for him. From what he had seen in the imposter’s fights with Harry, he was the kind of genius with spells who could construct spells that would manage to baffle Lucius—and if Severus was not fooled, still, his expertise lay in potions and not in tracking spells. It was possible that the imposter could hold him at bay until he had stolen everything he needed from Draco, and then Severus would find only that man when he came to rescue him.   
  
As for Harry coming…he might have heard of the kidnapping by now, but Draco knew him. Humiliated pride and interfering friends would hold him at a distance. He could not count on Harry.  
  
 _That_  revelation, after all that had happened, was the one that almost stole the strength from his legs. He held himself up anyway, with a vast, dragging breath of air, and met the imposter’s gaze straight on.  
  
“Then let’s go to the place that you planned to take the knowledge from me,” he said. “I want to make the trade there.”  
  
 _I’ll have to do this myself. And why should I fear that? Didn’t I manage to construct the relics room, and make a career as an architect, and win Harry’s love, on my own?_  
  
*  
  
They ended up outside a large boulder that crouched alone in the middle of a barren scrubland protected by so many Muggle-Repelling Charms that Severus had to catch his breath as they forced their way through them. Walking among them was like feeling swords rubbing against his shoulders. Though many wizards refused to acknowledge it, Muggle-Repelling Charms used in abundance made them feel unwelcome, too, in most places—which was only another sign of how thoroughly deranged Draco’s captor was.   
  
( _Memories, old taunts. “Hey, Mudblood! Bothered by the charms? That’s not surprising, is it, when your father’s a Mudblood?” And Lily holding his hand, glaring at his taunters with scornful glittering eyes, and telling him, “Never mind, Severus. They can’t even get their abusive terms right, can they? Your father’s a_  Muggle!”  _And she met his eyes then, and the scornful glitter was gone, and in them instead was a gentleness that made this one of his sweetest memories.  
  
He had been eleven years old. Without, as yet, the stubborn teenage pride that would one day make him decide that being rescued by a_ girl  _was intolerable_ ).  
  
The boulder hummed with magic. Severus, studying it, would be willing to bet that at least half of it was glamours, but the illusions were woven with deceptive mastery into the stone itself. It would take them too long to poke through them.  
  
Potter didn’t bother trying. He aimed his wand instead and barked out a single harsh command. Severus decided, later, that it hadn’t been an incantation after all, only the command of an exasperated man to his wandless magic.  
  
The boulder shivered, and whirlwinds of dust and dead grass began to gather about it. Severus stepped closer to Potter, the Curse Potion hovering in its circular vial behind him. And so he saw the glitter of the Cobra Curse around the base of the boulder, rising and flaring its hood out as Potter’s whirlwinds danced closer and closer to the stone.  
  
“ _Potter_ ,” he said, and though Weasley glared at him as if Severus were the Dark Lord himself when he touched Potter’s shoulder—  
  
( _And he did not like it much himself, feeling flesh that shivered with the pollution of James Potter’s blood under his hand_ ).  
  
\--it succeeded in attracting Potter’s attention. Severus ignored the outraged shine in his eyes, and nodded to the Cobra Curse. By now it had risen on its “tail,” the line of golden light that bound it to the earth, and was slithering closer to them with large loops of its body, looking like nothing so much as a kite string without the kite. No one who did not know what it was would have found it deadly. That, Severus was sure, was part of the point. His respect for the subtlety of their enemy increased an inch.  
  
“It is the Cobra Curse,” he said, deciding that Auror training must have covered such spells. “Dispatch it.”  
  
Potter opened his mouth and hissed.  
  
Severus felt a moment of vivid distaste for Gryffindor dramatics, and then realized that the Parseltongue emerging from Potter’s mouth had, in fact, calmed the Cobra Curse. The line of light halted, swaying back and forth, the hood fluttering rapidly. Two eyes formed, balls of crimson flame that Severus had never seen the like of before, high in the end that Severus had to assume was the head. They examined Potter raptly, and then the curse moved further towards him and hissed a reply.  
  
Potter pointed at the boulder as he hissed back, and the sounds crept down Severus’s spine and up to his skull and found a place in his memory. He had heard Potter use Parseltongue in his second year at the dueling club that that fool Lockhart had organized, but more to the point and more often and more recently, he had heard the Dark Lord use it, hissing foul commands to that great snake of his. Potter’s voice sounded as violent and vicious and disturbing as the Dark Lord’s had.   
  
Severus took some small joy in that, which helped to compensate for his irritation that he couldn’t understand what Potter was saying. They were not so different in some ways, Potter and the monster he had defeated.  
  
The Cobra Curse suddenly rose, and Severus found himself tensing; danger to Potter still called that response from him, after all these years. It was a maddening thing to discover. But the snake ward only hissed a long and what, to Severus, sounded like a complicated sentence, and then bowed its head to Potter and dissipated into golden nothingness.  
  
Potter raked a hand through his hair, nodded at no one in particular, and appeared to dismiss the way Weasley was staring at him in frank awe—though Severus could not, because he thought it might account for much of the arrogant and reckless way the boy behaved. “Let’s go,” he said, and took a step forwards.  
  
A wall of blue flame sprang up in front of them, and Potter screamed.  
  
 _Well_ , Severus thought in resignation as he drew his wand and prepared to cast the countercurse as well as hold Weasley back from dashing uselessly to Potter’s rescue,  _I suppose I should have suspected this._  
  
*  
  
“Here.”  
  
“Here” was a circle, cut by a spiral that started at its outer edge and proceeded to its center, drawn in the middle of another stone floor. Draco studied the precise lines of the circle and spiral both and reckoned that they had been chiseled by fire. In both glittered tiny purple flakes that Draco suspected were scattered bits of amethyst crystal.   
  
He recognized the spell. It had been meant to clear the mind, to settle the spirit, and most of the time Draco would say that was harmless magic. But here, he thought it had probably been employed to help wipe the man who the imposter had been out of existence, so that he might more perfectly imitate Draco.  
  
And now, from the anxious, loving way he turned towards Draco and beckoned him on, he was hoping that it would do the same thing to Draco.  
  
“Come here,” he whispered.  
  
Draco lifted his head and thought of what Harry would do at the moment. He would march forwards with Gryffindor courage because that was what he did—  
  
 _No. Not all the time. He can exercise Slytherin cunning, too, the way he did when he sent me that letter. His reactions are more complex than I’m used to thinking of them. And the imposter doesn’t understand them at all, so if I act like him, I’m more likely to confuse this man who thinks that he knows most of me._  
  
Harry would walk forwards and pretend to be in compliance, then, the way Draco was already doing, but he would be looking for another escape route all the time, and a way to reduce the risk to himself—as long as he was the only one in danger. And for the moment, that held true. Draco froze his face into a smile and stepped into the center of the spiral; the imposter had moved out of the way and left it to him, though he remained inside the circle.  
  
The moment Draco’s feet touched the center of the spiral, purple light flared up like the Aurora Borealis from the flakes of amethyst, and then settled again.  
  
“Ah,” said the imposter, and shot Draco a narrow, intense glance. “The magic is almost ready to take you.”  
  
“What do I have to do?” Draco never knew how he managed to keep his voice clear and unintimidated.   
  
No, wait, he did. The image of green eyes and a lightning bolt scar that he was holding firmly in front of his mental vision.  
  
“To recite the incantation I’ll speak for you,” said the imposter, “granting me access to your mind and soul so that I can understand the things I still don’t understand.” His voice was rapid but low, his face so soft that Draco thought he looked aroused. He hoped that the imitation was less than perfect in this case; he would hate to think he looked so languid and puffy when he was on the verge of orgasm. “And then you’ll pass mostly into nothingness. So soft, so gentle; it’s a  _gentle_  death. You can’t think we’d want a harsh death for myself.”  
  
 _When he’s reciting the incantation to me. I’ll ask for one repetition—just one, because he must know my memory for spells is fairly good. But I can’t let him complete it. I’ll have to move, then_.  
  
Draco nodded, and the man began to speak.  
  
And then the stone room shuddered, and blue flames flashed across Draco’s vision, and a scream split the air, and the imposter said, in a voice that cracked like the smile that had come across his face when he was staring at Draco in the throes of pain, “They are here? _Potter_? I’ll kill them!”  
  
He turned, wand rising.   
  
The image of Harry hovered in front of Draco’s eyes.   
  
 _Harry. Harry came for me._  
  
His breathing slowed and shortened, and he wavered on his feet for an instant.  
  
Then he leaped out of the spiral and charged the imposter, catching him around the waist and bearing him to the ground. The next moment, he was thrashing desperately for the wand, whilst the imposter screamed without words and tried to strangle him.  
  
The only clear thought in his head flashed like the blue flame and rang like the scream.  
  
 _I won’t let him hurt Harry. I won’t._


	27. In Virtue, In Vengeance

A scramble and a punch and a cry and a stab. Draco was fighting a creature as pitiless and mighty as one of the Greek Furies.  
  
And he was losing.  
  
He knew that from the contemptuous ease with which the imposter kept any wand away from him, with the rapidity of the elbows and fists slamming into his ribs and shoulders, with the way the other man’s legs flailed beneath him and how he cried out curses without a pause for breath. He hadn’t managed to unleash any magic yet, given how close they were—he must fear that he was going to hit himself with the backlash as well as Draco with the actual spell—but he was causing Draco pain anyway.  
  
Draco thought about letting himself be driven backwards. He could lie on the floor, gasping, his hands raised in surrender. The imposter would pause a moment and glare at him in wrath, and in that moment Draco could—  
  
No. Draco doubted that would work. As maddened as the imposter was now, he would probably rape Draco’s mind with Legilimency before Draco could decide what to do, and he would certainly read the intention to attack on Draco’s face. Draco no longer thought he was subtle enough to fool someone who had studied him so long.  
  
 _You did once before_ , his mind hissed at him as the imposter briefly pinned him to the floor and almost held a wand to his throat. Draco coiled a leg around his hips and kicked him in the arse, and the man lost his balance. Draco scrambled away and then behind and grabbed him around the throat. Nails raked across his forearm.  
  
Draco tried to wrench to the side and throw the imposter to the floor again, but the man snarled at him and bit his hand. Draco jerked it free automatically—he had been taught to respond that way to pain, and then wait until house-elves could deal with whatever had hurt him—and the imposter turned and pointed the wand directly at his eyes.  
  
“This is the end,” said the stranger, his voice muffled but the hatred clear in his eyes. “Your obsession with Potter has corrupted you to the extent that you could hurt  _me_ , the new version of you, the only one in the world who wants what is best for you.” Hurt joined the hatred, and Draco stared at him, baffled, not wanting to die at that moment because he wanted so badly to understand what would make someone act that way. “He’s flawed you. He’s twisted you and broken you, and you can’t even value a peaceful death.”  
  
Draco, keeping his eyes steady on the imposter, started to shift a foot to the left. If he could just whirl around the man’s body fast enough, he might be able to snatch his hawthorn wand, which he could see sticking out of a robe pocket.  
  
The imposter shook his head, blond hair flapping around his tragic expression. “And now I understand things so much better,” he said. “You will never end your obsession with Potter until you see him lying dead at your feet. How fortunate that he is now here.”  
  
And he turned and Apparated away. A moment later, Draco felt the snap as powerful anti-Apparition wards locked into place.  
  
*  
  
The blue flame coiled around Harry and burned him from the inside out.  
  
He tried to keep his lips shut on the screams, but it didn’t work. The flames found their way through his skin and then turned backwards, so that it felt as if he were suffering from hundreds of ingrown nails all at once. And then the pain snapped past that, expanding and racing throughout his body until he was entering new horizons of pain, new landscapes of agony, throbbing and dancing and shivering clouds of anguish.   
  
Over his screaming, he heard someone chanting spells, but the pain only grew sharper and spikier, and Harry thought he felt something within the cradle of his skin fall into ashes and ruin. Perhaps his liver. Perhaps his heart.  
  
The thought of losing his heart reminded him of Draco, and he forced himself to rise to his feet by the simple expedient of pushing his hands against the ground and concentrating on the motion of his muscles. The pain was real, yes, more real than anything he had experienced in his life—except his love for Draco.  
  
 _Ron and Hermione won’t like me naming it love_ , he thought distantly, and the thought led him further still from the pain. He had a gasping moment, a breathing space, when he wasn’t at the mercy of the fire and the flames had paused as though unsure how to proceed. He had to remember that Draco had likely suffered more than this, and needed Harry to come to his rescue, however proud and stiff and ungrateful he might be at first.  
  
And then he realized the reason he had a space amid the flames was that they had stopped burning. He blinked and looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of the boulder. It seemed to have vanished. So had Lucius and Snape and Ron, as a matter of fact. A wall of white wind enclosed him from all sides. Harry warily held up his wand, wondering if this was some new manner of ward. His hand shook with spasms of lingering pain, and so he clasped his fingers around the shaft of the wand and braced his elbow on his side.  
  
“Potter.”  
  
The word had a cool tone, but Harry had yearned for the warmth that lay under that coolness. He looked straight ahead, and Draco stood in front of him.  
  
And it was  _his_  Draco, the Draco he had imagined, with a reluctant half-smile tugging at his lips and his head tilted to the side, with a small piece of hair falling in front of his eyes, as if he needed it to shield him from the terrors Harry’s gaze might pour out. Harry took an eager, sidling step towards him, and then stopped, unsure.  
  
But when he reached out, he could feel the vibrations of the hawthorn wand. The wand was stuck in Draco’s robe pocket, and Harry laughed aloud. Draco at once drew back and away from him, his hand hovering above the wand, as if he were going to draw it if Harry were amused at his expense.  
  
“No, no!” Harry whispered. He wavered from the pain again, but this time he didn’t care. He could drop his own holly wand to his side and stand free from fear. Draco had managed to rescue himself. “I was laughing because—because it’s you, and you’re whole, and I didn’t even need to come into the rock and save you.”  
  
“You’ll never need to save  _me_ ,” said Draco, with a twist to his voice that Harry imagined implied Draco thought Harry would need saving himself.  
  
“No, I don’t reckon I will.” Harry took a deep breath, because he was remembering the letter now, and the articles, and the way that he had felt when he woke in the grass amid the dew and under the moon after Draco had slept with him and then abandoned him. He almost wanted to clench a fist and punch Draco; he almost wanted to lunge forwards, grab his shoulders, and kiss him.   
  
He knew he didn’t want to do the responsible thing, which was what he did next. He nodded to the wall of white wind orbiting around them. “Do you know how to drop this thing?”  
  
Draco blinked, twice, his long lashes—why had Harry never noticed how long they were before? And he called himself an expert on Draco—brushing his skin and then rising slowly again. “Why would I know how to drop this thing?”  
  
“Because I thought the imposter might have told you. Or maybe you discovered it when you broke free.” Harry glanced in irritation at the wind wall. Ron must be frantic by now, and Lucius would be imagining what could have happened to his son, and Snape—Snape was probably preparing his best lecture for the moment when Harry appeared again. “You didn’t, did you? Then I’ll try.”  
  
He lifted his wand, and once again his hand shook wildly. And this time Draco stepped towards him, resting one hand on his arm and smiling. “Harry,” he murmured. “You have to rest. Whatever you encountered on your way to not-rescue me must have taken much out of you.”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, but he was looking at Draco’s face, and the way Draco looked at him without a hint of resentment over the letter. He was thinking of Draco’s voice, and the way he had called Harry by his first name.  
  
No hesitation, either. Even though, when they had first seen each other just a few minutes ago, he had spoken “Potter,” also without hesitation.  
  
Harry thought Draco might love him, someday, when he had grown the sensitivity to do so, but he didn’t think they could have a placid relationship yet, without addressing the issues of the letter and Draco’s betrayal.  
  
“Why are you staring at me as if I were about to knock you down and snatch the Snitch from you?” Draco asked, his voice soft, mild, amused. “Let me handle this, Harry. I want to be free of it as much as you do, and it’s clear at the moment that you would be—incompetent to handle it, let us say.”  
  
 _Too smooth_. Harry gave a great shudder, and the wound in his side throbbed, as if to remind him of what had happened the last time he mistook the imposter for the real Draco.   
  
And yet, was it beyond imagination that Draco would want to avoid talking about those things until they were out of danger? The wards and leaving the imposter’s neighborhood were more important than threshing everything out right now.  
  
“How did you defeat the imposter?” he asked.  
  
Draco stiffened, then sighed. “You won’t approve of it when I tell you,” he said. “I’m trying to avert an explosion for the moment. Let me think of dispelling charms right now, won’t you? And you mustn’t mind if I use Dark Arts.” He raised his wand and murmured an incantation too soft for Harry to hear. The whirlwind shrank, but unfortunately contracted inwards as its walls lowered, so that Harry was forced a step back towards Draco.  
  
 _That sounds like something Draco would say. And it’s like Draco not to get the incantation right the first time. He’s not as great a wizard as he sometimes thinks he is._  
  
So many clues pointing the one way. So many clues pointing the other. And Harry had to worry, too, about what Draco would say if Harry made the wrong decision and attacked him, and it turned out he was the real one after all.  
  
Harry swallowed and said, “There’s one thing I have to know first, because it’s plagued me since you disappeared.”  
  
Draco gave him an indulgent look out of the corner of his eye even as he lifted his wand, which must be the imposter’s stolen wand, for another try. “What’s that?”  
  
“How did you react when you first received my letter?”  
  
And there was a momentary blankness in Draco’s face, which could have been startlement or wariness or mere surprise that Harry would bring up something like  _that_  at a time like  _this_ , but Harry thought he knew what it really was, and he wasn’t about to take the chance that this Draco might not be the real one, not now.  
  
He attacked.  
  
*  
  
Lucius fell back a step when the white wind surrounded Potter. The suddenness of the ward’s rising gave him no time to consider reactions. He lashed out with a Lightning Curse that had broken stronger wards in its time than most Death Eaters would ever know; it was how Lucius had smashed the defenses of several of his rivals in the original war, so that the Aurors could find them. A Malfoy’s faith was always qualified.  
  
The lightning rebounded and came back at him. Lucius knew it would have struck him if Severus hadn’t already erected a shield, a glittering blue diamond that dissipated the lightning harmlessly along its surface. Lucius let out a long breath and turned to thank Severus.  
  
Severus hadn’t waited to be thanked. He had stepped past Lucius and begun to chant something in a strong, rolling voice, but no language Lucius knew. His wand was aimed at the white wind, and Lucius calmed, knowing that Severus could break it if anyone could. They had only to wait.  
  
And, in the meantime, look for the boulder. Lucius knew he ought to be able to see it still past the relatively small circle of the whirlwind, but it had vanished as though it were illusion or a spell like Severus’s shield, meant to last only until it was no longer needed. Lucius frowned and took a step to the side, peering.  
  
Weasley nearly knocked him down. He was groaning, and swearing, and yelling, “Harry? Harry, come back here, you mad bastard!”  
  
To Lucius’s disgust, his voice held the sound of tears. Lucius rolled his eyes and snapped, “Weasley, your weeping can’t help him now. Help me find the boulder. The man who attacked him lives there. If we can find him, we can make him drop the ward and free Potter.” _And free my son_ , he thought, but he doubted that argument would have convinced Weasley.  
  
After a breath that made him sway on his feet, the red-haired menace nodded and aimed his wand beyond the whirlwind. He chanted a Seeking Spell that ought to find the presence of any stone in the vicinity, if Lucius was construing the Latin right. Reluctantly impressed—he had not supposed that Aurors knew such useful magic—Lucius cast the Seeking Spell in another direction, and waited.  
  
Nothing came back to them, no report. Perhaps the boulder had indeed vanished, or had never existed in the first place.  
  
Lucius was about to shed some of his own blood and cast the Seeking Spell again, this time to seek the presence of similar blood—Draco’s—when Severus finished his spell. A black cloud appeared out of nowhere to engulf the white wind. It appeared like an eclipse, and steadily darkened like one, until Lucius had to look away. The thin rim of light around the darkness threatened to blind him.  
  
And then it stopped. And Severus cursed, with that rarest of notes in his voice: disbelief.  
  
Lucius looked back at the ward, and saw that it had grown smaller and tighter, but had not vanished, as Severus’s spell seemed to have been designed to make it do.  
  
And that it was swaying back and forth, like a sack full of cats fighting.  
  
*  
  
Draco had found the stone room where the imposter had first brought him without trouble, but from there, he could find no exit. He crossed the central floor five times. He banged on all the walls as high as he could reach, looking for a hidden door. He cast a wandless spell that should have revealed the presence of steps to him. He tried to Apparate, envisioning the last place he could clearly remember the imposter bringing him before they emerged into this hidden lair, and reappeared in the same place.  
  
 _But we Apparated to get in here! I know we did._  
  
The image of the way the imposter could be torturing Harry made his head ring harder than the fear itself. He darted wildly in several directions, like a rabbit running from a hawk’s shadow, before he slowed himself with a forcible jerk and a fierce breath.  
  
 _I can’t let myself be consumed by this. I’ve got to remember that Harry’s depending on me, and so that gives me more responsibility to keep my head, not less. I know certain spells can mimic Apparition, and it’s by one of them that we must have traveled. What one would the imposter be most likely to use, given what’s here and what I know about him?_  
  
A leap through darkness, Draco’s old reading whispered to him. That was what Apparition was, the simplest description of it, if one ignored the squeezing sensation and the distance crossed and the magical theory that hummed in the back of one’s mind and polluted one’s understanding of the act. (There had been a period when Draco couldn’t Apparate because he had paid too much attention to the impossibilities of it as expressed in magical theory and didn’t trust his body and his wand anymore). A leap through darkness had to have light to lead it. Some spells that mimicked it traveled by sun or stars or moon, harnessing the light of heaven to pass through wards. The lights of heaven laughed at wards.  
  
And so could other light.  
  
Draco snapped his eyes open and stepped towards the fireplace, laying one hand on the cool stone. He spoke the incantation that mimicked Apparition through fire, concentrating solely on the syllables as he rolled them and released them, so he wouldn’t panic himself by trying to remember if he actually remembered or by thinking of his wandless state.  
  
And then the spell seized him, and he was tumbling through a darkness brilliant with tiny sparks of light, like the night sky spangled with stars, and triumphant words rang in his head.  
  
 _I do use logic to solve problems, most of the time. I don’t fight like Harry after all._  
  
And then he was in a tight, narrow space with someone who looked like him and a charging figure that looked extraordinarily like Harry, and there were white walls around them, and the hawthorn wand was directly in front of him as the imposter flung up a spell that scorched across Harry’s face.  
  
Draco snatched at the wand. His first instinct had been to fling himself between Harry and the imposter’s magic, but he would be useless with only flesh instead of magic to block it.  
  
*  
  
Harry had thought the imposter a mad genius before, when he was fighting to defend himself and kill Harry.  
  
Now he was fighting for his life, and he was  _brilliant_.  
  
Lightning stabbed the darkness around them; light coruscated and became burning fire; showers of earth rained  _to_  earth and rose up again as water; rose petals fell on Harry’s face, stung him with small thorns, and then became buzzing bees whose stingers dripped a deadly green venom that Harry knew he didn’t want on him. Crack and flash and alteration and change, and Harry could barely defend himself.   
  
He tried the academic means of defense that the Aurors had instilled in him, carefully paced Shield Charms and offensive spells and absorption spells and Vanishing spells alternating, and found himself scorched and limping in under a minute. So he gave in to instinct and listened to his body, and he was soaring in seconds, driving back the imposter’s attacks with a glittering array of his own, spells uttered before he knew what he’d choose or heard the words on his tongue.  
  
But he was only holding his own—which, though impressive enough in itself, wouldn’t free him from the cage of this ward, or stop the imposter from hurting Draco, or stop the imposter altogether.  
  
He needed something else, something that would compensate for the lack of ground here, and the imposter’s genius, and the other wards and defenses that he probably had buried around the boulder and would call upon in a moment.  
  
And then he was there, the real Draco, breathless, with his hair flying around his face, and he snatched the hawthorn wand out of the imposter’s pocket, handling it as if the wand had been with him from childhood.  
  
As it had.  
  
Harry relaxed and smiled. A doubt he wouldn’t have admitted he had, even under pain of death, melted away from him, and as the imposter stared at him, he snarled another Shield Charm and let down part of his guard as if he were faltering from weariness at last.   
  
In the meantime, Draco struck him in the back with a spell shaped like a silver dagger and edged with blue flame.  
  
Harry couldn’t even feel that it was dishonorable for the imposter to go down like that, not when the white ward faltered the moment he did and left them in the open air again, and not when Draco caught his eye and grinned, sleek and savage and shining, a predator.  
  
 _If he can still smile like that_ , Harry thought, smiling back, dizzy with pain and relief and exhilaration,  _then he wasn’t hurt too badly._  
  
That, at the moment, was a wonderful gift all its own.  
  
*  
  
Severus had awaited the moment when the ward would fall, and the fighters inside would be revealed to him. He was sure Potter was one of them. Potter would fight if the sky were falling and the sun burning out; he had a dogged stubbornness that did not know what it meant to give up.  
  
Of course, if he were fighting Draco himself, then Severus would have killed him. But no, when the ward fell, he and Draco were meeting each other’s eyes, and a third figure sprawled on the ground between them, his eyes fixed on the sky and his lips moving in what could have been a prayer but which Severus was certain was a malediction.  
  
Weasley gave a shout of relief and rushed forwards, no doubt to gather his friend in his arms and slap him on the back in some Gryffindor ceremony of greeting.  
  
( _No one had ever done that for Severus. Even Lily did not often embrace him, and when she did, it felt as if it were a gift granted from heaven, which meant Severus stood stiff and unresponsive in her arms, trying to memorize every nuance of the moment, and did not enjoy it_ ).  
  
Lucius was not far behind him. His face shone with a subdued light no one would see if he were not familiar with it, and which Severus himself had not seen there often since Narcissa died.   
  
( _Should he say ‘was killed?’ Died seemed too sanitized, as if she had died of old age instead of being murdered by Bellatrix. But on the other hand, Narcissa had done a stupid thing in rousing Bellatrix’s jealousy_ ).  
  
Severus ignored them both. In a moment they would be in the way and would interfere with his vengeance, but they were not yet. He made a subtle gesture with his wand that he had memorized when he first studied most of the Dark Arts books that crowded his shelves. Some of the products of his lab were simply too dangerous to touch as one administered them.  
  
The circular vial containing the Curse Potion shot forwards, darted around Weasley’s shoulder and under Lucius’s arm, and smashed into the man lying on the ground. He leaped back to his feet as if at the shock of cold water, and blinked at them all for a moment. Draco and Potter fell together, wands leveled.  
  
But the imposter did not try to attack. He merely stared, and then he Apparated away.  
  
Shouted remonstrance came Severus’s way. He was sure Potter would have cursed him himself, if he had dared.  
  
Severus looked away and flicked a bit of dust from his sleeve. The Curse Potion was the only appropriate vengeance, and if the imposter seemed free at the moment, he would not remain so. His cursed fate, instead, would ensure that he ran until he felt an inexplicable compulsion to return and confront Draco, and then the potion would take effect.  
  
He had the illusion of freedom, but not the reality.  
  
( _Severus knew what that was like all too well_ ).


	28. Give Me the Man

It was—later.  
  
Draco had not tried to explain himself or done much more than lower his wand and reassure his father that he didn’t have any lasting wounds. He had repeated the same thing to Snape, with a more direct look that Harry suspected came from unfortunate experiences in the past when he had tried to lie to his Potions professor. He had seemed mildly astonished to see Ron there, but had ignored him after an initial staring contest.  
  
He had not said a word to Harry.  
  
He had gazed instead, and if Harry could have trusted the emotions that he saw appearing in his eyes, he would have immediately surrendered his hostility, reached out, embraced Draco, and leaned gratefully on his chest, like someone coming home. But he didn’t dare trust looks without words, not anymore. So he had nodded, and swallowed, and stared back for a little while, then turned away as if he had important things to talk to Ron about.  
  
Ron thought they did, at least. The first thing he did was take Harry’s arm in a merciless grip so that he could mutter into his ear, “You’re never going back with him and forgiving him like  _that_.”  
  
“Not like that, no,” Harry said, turning his head to make sure he was whispering, too. Draco’s eyes seared the back of his head. No doubt he wondered what in the world they were conversing about. “He’s got some groveling to do before I forgive him.”  
  
Ron groaned and tightened the hold of his hand again. Harry winced, but Ron didn’t let him go or move away. “And no more than that?”  
  
“I think that’ll be sufficiently bad, for someone as proud as he is.” Harry smiled humorlessly, feeling a bit of the anger he’d felt when he first saw the  _Prophet_  articles bubbling back up. “Do you know how he hates to humble himself? He’ll go through the most intense gyrations to avoid admitting that he doesn’t know some obscure fact.”  
  
“Then what makes you think he’ll agree to humble himself at all?”  
  
That gave Harry pause. He had been thinking, he realized then, as if Draco’s joining him on an equal footing was inevitable, but how did he know it was? Perhaps Draco would still prefer his pride to Harry.   
  
His eyes said he wouldn’t, but Harry needed words more than he needed eyes.  
  
“You see what I mean,” Ron went on, leaning persuasively towards Harry. “You don’t really know him. It’s not that long since you started guarding him and getting to know him better, instead of just observing him from a distance. I want to protect you, Harry. And him,” he added, when Harry raised an eyebrow at him. “As long as the imposter isn’t caught, it’s still an open case.” He sighed gustily, expressing without words, Harry knew, the difficult position Snape’s potion had placed them in. “But I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”  
  
Harry looked over his shoulder. Draco was staring openly now, resisting his father’s attempts to pry details about his kidnapping out of him. He even had a hand resting on Lucius’s shoulder, as if he had pushed him out of the way when he would have blocked Draco’s view of Harry.   
  
And whilst Harry wasn’t inclined to put his trust in  _just_  looks anymore, he did know that those gaping eyes had a claim on him, and would have to be answered soon.  
  
“I don’t think you can keep me from getting hurt,” he replied to Ron quietly, still never moving his eyes from Draco’s. He had never had a lover before whose face pulled at him with that kind of magnetic force, he thought absently, the way that he had never been aware of how anyone else walking into a room changed the currents of emotion and perception swirling around its occupants. Yes, he could say that was his obsession, but, like it or not, that obsession was where his feeling for Draco had begun, and he would have to deal with it no matter what their future relationship was like.  
  
“Mate—“  
  
Harry patted Ron’s shoulder in much the same way Draco had patted Lucius. “That’s just the way it is,” he said. “This is a matter for him and me to settle, not anyone else. That’s just the way it has to be.”  
  
*  
  
And now it was later, and they were back in Malfoy Manor, and Draco had been spirited away to the Potions lab by Snape, probably because Snape didn’t trust him after all, and Harry was sitting in the middle of his own bed in Draco’s rooms, staring at the bed from which Draco had been kidnapped. He didn’t know what Lucius and Ron had said to the other Aurors to get them to go away. He only knew that they’d done it, and he was grateful.  
  
And now he could hear footsteps mounting the stairs towards him.  
  
Harry took a deep breath and turned around. He kept sitting. If he had to face Draco on his feet to have any strength, then it was already too late for the kind of bond he wanted to have.  
  
*  
  
Draco had swallowed the potion that Severus offered him under protest. The imposter had cast Cruciatus on him, that was true, but it had been several hours ago. Draco was sure that he had the shaking under control, and he had some experience in healing from the nerve damage. Bellatrix had been too fond of the Unforgivable Curses for the good of anyone who had to share a house or blood with her.  
  
But Severus had still dragged him to the lab the moment they returned to the Manor, and then stared at him, and then stared at him some more when Draco held the vial away from him and waved at the fumes rising from it, and then leaned near until his nose almost touched the tip of Draco’s when Draco continued to refuse it.  
  
“Mr. Malfoy,” he said, in that voice that spoke Detention as a fluent second language, “you  _will_  take the potion standing up. Or you will take it Stupefied and lying in a bed. It is your choice.”  
  
He still knew where to pause impressively, too, and make you fear for your life just hearing the words, Draco thought with grudging admiration as he swallowed the thick, sickly green potion. There were times that he would have given up many of his other achievements in order to do what Severus did with such natural ease.  
  
But his gifts lay elsewhere, and as he climbed to his bedroom and the confrontation with Harry that he knew would happen there, all of them seemed to have deserted him.  
  
 _Where’s the eloquence I thought could command him? Where’s the logic that I knew would bring him to his knees? And I thought I could smile and turn him upside down, but that won’t work on a man who could write me a letter like that._  
  
For the first time, Draco felt a strong frisson of admiration move through him. Harry had a Slytherin’s cruelty and cunning in him—when he  _wanted_  to. Draco wondered idly if having a choice between weapons like that, rather than using one set all the time, argued a kind of superiority.  
  
And then he stood in front of the bedroom door, and couldn’t put it off any longer. He knocked—rather strange considering it was his bedroom, but he was going with courtesy more than common sense right now—and entered.  
  
Harry sat on his own bed, one leg drawn up beneath him in a sign of nervousness so open that Draco was surprised he showed it for a moment. And then he shook his head and told himself, again, that Harry didn’t spend his life in an atmosphere of intrigue and covert insults. Of course he would sit in a way that reflected his feelings, because he wanted to share and not conceal them.  
  
Draco shut the door behind him. He didn’t realize his hand was shaking until he dropped it to his side, away from the knob, and then he clasped it behind him to conceal the tremor. That didn’t do any good. His arms were shaking, too, and his shoulders, and his other hand. He was terrified at the mere thought of fulfilling his promise to Faustine and telling Harry the truth. He swallowed, and excused the delay by telling himself it was a good thing he had; his throat was so dry he couldn’t have spoken.  
  
“What is it? We can wait and talk about this later if you want.”  
  
Harry’s voice was thick with reluctance, but the words were gentle. Draco stared at him. His eyes were direct, as always. What frightened Draco to the point that he wanted very badly to turn and run out the door was another challenge to be faced to Harry, less terrifying than what he must have experienced when Draco was kidnapped.  
  
“We  _can_ ,” Harry went on, a sharper tone in his voice now, as if he thought Draco’s staring meant Draco didn’t believe him. “I would like to hear about what happened to you whilst you were in the imposter’s clutches, and you probably want to tell someone. I can’t imagine that either Snape or your father make the ideal audience.” He smiled, and it had only a touch of tension to it, mostly visible in the edges of his mouth. “So we can talk about that first. If you want.”  
  
It was the hesitance in his voice on those last words that decided Draco. Harry was treating him as if he were fragile, as if he had suffered unbounded torture at the man’s hands instead of a few Cruciatus Curses and other spells easily cured by Snape’s pain potion. And Draco had had enough of playing tormentor and victim.   
  
 _I want to help protect him, for once._  
  
“I actually think that would be harder to talk about,” he said, and then hesitated himself, because he wasn’t sure if he should move closer to Harry or sit on his own bed or stay where he was. In the end, after a shifting of his feet that, he told himself sharply, probably made him look like a small boy about to pee, he stood straight and looked at Harry’s chin. “I promised Faustine that I would tell you the truth when I saw you.”  
  
“Faustine? What has she got to do with anything?”  
  
Draco smiled, but he knew it was a strained smile and he didn’t try to continue it. Instead, still staring at Harry’s chin, he murmured, “I went to her for help in locating you after our—last meeting. She showed me a rather remarkable spell that forced me to live through the truth of the emotions haunting my mind, and taught me to know myself better. And she promised that if I didn’t tell you about what I learned when we next met, she’d do it for me.”  
  
Harry laughed, a short bark of sound that Draco found himself wanting to hear again despite its harshness. At least it was a sign that Harry could still find him amusing. “And what were these truths?”  
  
Draco’s hands were shaking again, and he found that he had to lower his gaze to them and away from Harry. “One was that I’d been obsessed with you much longer than you’d been obsessed with me,” he said carefully. “During the war—I fought the war for you.”  
  
“What?”  
  
 _It’s only understandable, not an insult, that he sounds so bewildered_ , Draco told himself, and beat back his automatic emotional reaction. “I wanted you to look at me,” he said. “Even if you scorned me, even if you thought I was an utterly intolerable little git, I wanted you to distinguish me from the rest of them. And I deluded myself into thinking that you were fighting to destroy  _me_ , rather than Voldemort.”  
  
Harry blinked twice. Once he lifted his hand as if he would reach out and touch Draco’s shoulder, but then he let it fall again, with a small and helpless shake of his head. “But that’s exactly what I don’t understand,” he said.  
  
“What?” Draco thought he had explained it all clearly enough. His face was flushed and stinging, and his hands  _still_  trembled. If he was feeling so humiliated, he must have explained it clearly.  
  
“Why would you want  _me_  to look at you?” Harry whispered. “I was a half-blood, and so you would have been prejudiced against me before you met me. I was your rival, and that gave you an additional reason to hate me. And I never thought that you put as much stock in the Chosen One mystique as the rest of them did. There’s every reason for you to despise me from the beginning, instead of longing for my attention.”  
  
Draco winced.  _He’s going to make me walk through the fire, isn’t he?_  
  
But the remembrance of what he had felt when he realized Harry had come to rescue him, more than the thought of Faustine’s revenge if he didn’t go through this, drove him to continue speaking.   
  
“It was partially the Chosen One mystique,” he said slowly. “You were the only  _child_  I knew when I was one who had done something like that. I always found it unfair that adults were the heroes of most of the stories I heard and that all of them had power over me. I suppose part of me thought that if I could get close enough to you, you would teach me how you fought the adults and I would have power, too.”  
  
Harry’s face closed off into a smooth and emotionless mask. “I see,” he said.  
  
“But it was more than that,” Draco added quietly. Intense frustration filled his throat like the dryness of fear for a moment.  _I could tell the whole truth and still lose him because of the way he interprets things.  
  
Or just because of the ugliness of that particular truth_ , announced a voice in his head that sounded a lot like the one he had heard whilst he examined the globe filled with his own thoughts that Faustine’s spell had created.  _You have to leave him free to react to this, rather than trying to tailor your words so that he’ll give you what you want._  
  
Draco took a deep breath. The prize of that attention he had wanted all along awaited him if he did this right, and yes, it was worth the risk of exposing himself to an unsympathetic audience.  
  
“I—I wanted you to look at me because you  _wanted_  to after I met you,” he said. “You were more than I’d been told. You obviously didn’t understand anything about the wizarding world. And you played great Quidditch for no reason. You were a rival in a natural way, a way that I couldn’t have had a rival among the pure-blood families I knew. They would have trained for years to defeat me, and if they did win, I could have promised myself I would learn the best training methods and beat them the next time. But you made it effortless, and that made me have to work harder.”  
  
Harry leaned back against the pillows, looking faintly bemused. It was the traces of a brighter emotion at the corners of his eyes that made Draco soldier on.  
  
“That obsession got worse when I realized I  _couldn’t_  defeat you, and whenever you got too involved in being an ordinary student or the Savior of the Wizarding World or a Gryffindor and ignored me completely. I wanted to matter to you, but I never had the feeling that I did when I wasn’t right in front of you.”  
  
“You didn’t,” Harry said.  
  
Draco closed his eyes. The words went into him like a knife into his abdomen. For a moment, he thought that the spells the imposter had cast on him had hurt less. “I see,” he said.  
  
“You had an effect on me,” said Harry. “But it was mostly because of the way you tormented my friends. I would hear you in my head calling Hermione a Mudblood or Ron poor.” His tone changed, and Draco opened his eyes to see him frowning. “I never understood, later, why I started to find your voice enchanting.”  
  
 _There it is_. It was the reminder Draco needed, the proof positive that Harry had started to feel something for him in return. Without some notion of that return, he never would have risked speaking like this. He sucked noisily at the air entering his lungs and said, “And I deluded myself after the war, too. I thought that one defeat was all I needed, that I would be able to ignore you for good after I crumpled you and left you bleeding. But I need you more than that. I need you as a permanent part of my life.”  
  
There was nothing to do after that but to shut his eyes and hold very still.  
  
*  
  
Harry stared at Draco. He knew his hand was clenched in the bedsheets. He tried to withdraw it, and couldn’t. Even a flexing of his fingers was beyond him.  
  
What Draco had told him astonished him beyond measure.  
  
That someone would want him because he was the Chosen One was familiar ground, and when Draco had said that that was one component in what he felt for Harry, Harry could feel the doors to his heart slamming shut. He couldn’t be with someone who was with  _him_  for wealth and fame. He had tried several times, most recently with Penelope. Sometimes he had seen the stars in her eyes, but as long as she loved him  _as well as_  all the advantages that came with dating the Savior of the Wizarding World, couldn’t he put up with that?  
  
Well, no. He hadn’t been able to be what she wanted all the time, and she had gone to the papers. And Draco had done the same thing, Harry reminded himself against the leap of his soul that urged him to forgive Draco too quickly. He would  _remember_  that. It was a good thing always to know what one’s lover was capable of.  
  
But Draco had also said that he wanted Harry’s attention for other reasons, and that he even felt Harry was above him in some undefined way. That he wanted to be part of his life, and couldn’t stand it when he wasn’t. That his feelings had a tinge of worship to them—well, he hadn’t said that, but Harry knew he felt it, because he felt the same sort of things himself.  
  
No one had  _ever_  said anything like that to him. Harry knew he had that kind of camaraderie and love from Ron and Hermione, but he had resigned himself to not having it in a physical relationship. And he had always thought that he would care more for Draco than Draco would care for him. It was why he had accepted being a bodyguard. At least that was a chance to be close.  
  
 _I need you as a permanent part of my life._  
  
Some long-denied part of Harry, some selfish and love-craving part that he had tried to bury after his childhood and adolescence, had waited all his life for someone to say those words. He wanted to be needed, to be longed for, and not just to do the needing or longing.  
  
 _Can you trust him?_  
  
Harry sat still for long moments and regarded Draco. Draco had his eyes shut. His pulse throbbed visibly in his throat. If he could trust him at all, Harry thought idly, it must be now, when he had left himself vulnerable with such a confession.  
  
Or an  _assumed_  confession. Harry had thought he could trust Draco when Draco took him to that place of pure magic, tied him up, and made love to him without harming him. The harm had come later, and it had all been planned. Perhaps Draco regretted making those comments to Rita Skeeter, but he had still done it.  
  
How was Harry to come to terms with that?  
  
He sighed as he realized that he couldn’t, not all at once. It would take weeks of thinking and deciding which were Draco’s crimes and which were the crimes Harry had accused him of and which were the ones he had dreamed of committing but hadn’t actually done. And Draco needed an answer now.  
  
It would have to be a test. He would have to watch Draco closely and wait for the moment that was sufficient to prove him to Harry.   
  
 _If I were strong_ , Harry thought, eyeing Draco,  _I would tell him that I needed more time and then watch him from a distance. If he turned to someone else or did something stupid again, at least I wouldn’t be as hurt about it as I would be if it happened right in front of me._  
  
But he wasn’t that strong. The selfish part of him had reached out to clutch Draco the moment that he said he needed Harry. Harry needed someone who needed him like that.  
  
 _Obsession_ , he thought with a faint smile, remembering the way that Ron had talked about the woman he’d seen in Diagon Alley.  _It grows around you and the person you obsess about and never lets you go, not completely. I think that Draco and I are just lucky that our obsessions grew together and twined around each other. Otherwise, I might die of the strangling vine, and he probably would, too—though mine would be despair and his would be jealousy._  
  
Harry opened his eyes and looked straight at Draco.  _This isn’t the perfect marriage that I used to dream about. But it’s not the shattered thing that I thought was all that was left to us, either. It might be stronger for the imperfections._  
  
“I need you as well,” he said.  
  
Draco seemed to exhale for the first time since he’d spoken his own words, and his face flushed with color.  
  
“But,” Harry said, lifting a hand and holding it towards him, “I can’t forget what you did that fast. I’ll watch you. I’ll want an apology for your going to the papers the way you did. And if I even  _think_  that you’re about to do it again—“  
  
He was startled when Draco’s hands closed on his shoulders and Draco’s mouth closed on his lips. In his experience of him, both seen and felt, Draco didn’t kiss this way: wildly and yearning, as if he thought Harry would fade from sight in the next moment. But now he was, and his tongue was sliding into Harry’s mouth and tracing a burning path across his gums and teeth, and Harry raised his arms and wrapped them around Draco’s shoulders in part because there was no other way to control the emotions inside himself.  
  
“I want you,” Draco said hoarsely when he pulled away again. “I need you. And you  _insult_  me by thinking that I would go to the papers again?”  
  
Harry grinned, and licked a bit of blood that had sprung from a tooth cutting into his lip. “That isn’t the same thing as an apology, you know.”   
  
Draco looked briefly outraged for a moment. Then he dropped to one knee, sighed heavily, and extended his arms to the sides like a Muggle actor imploring his ladylove to accept him.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said.  
  
And his tone was playful, but his eyes weren’t, and that was the reason Harry reached out and put his hands on his shoulders again.  
  
“We’ll try,” he said. “For now. I don’t promise to forgive you just yet.” He swallowed against the memory of old anger surging up his throat like bile. “And I reckon that you haven’t forgiven me that letter yet, either.”  
  
“Not—exactly,” said Draco, delicately. He tilted his head down for a moment, and Harry wondered what emotion he was hiding.  
  
When he looked up, his eyes were aflame with joy.  
  
He kissed Draco as delicately this time, fitting his hands around Draco’s skull and jaw, finding the most natural places for them.  
  
 _It might not work. But all we can do is try._  
  
 _We don’t have a choice but to try, as grown together as we are._


	29. Condemned to Everlasting Redemption

Lucius took a diary from the shelf where he had left it and sat down. For the first time he could remember, he turned the blue-edged pages impatiently, hunting for one particular passage, overrunning it, and then returning with a feeling that he was dragging a heavy finger over the ink and smudging it. He wasn’t, but his hand gripped the corner of the page and trembled with suppressed passion.  
  
 _I failed. Draco rescued himself, and Potter held the imposter off until Draco could strike him, and Severus was the one whose potion will make the fool sorry for his existence. I didn’t protect Draco the way Narcissa would have wanted me to._  
  
On the other hand, Weasley had demonstrated nothing more than loyalty to Potter. He had been just as useless. Couldn’t Lucius take comfort in that?  
  
 _No. Because he hasn’t sworn to guard Potter the way I swore to guard Draco.  
  
Useless. In every way a failure. _  
  
But it wasn’t anger with himself that made him turn the pages of Narcissa’s diary like this, seeking for and finding a certain passage. In the past, when he had conduct to censor himself for, he came here meek and unassuming, and looked at her writing with reverence. She was an image of success in one way; she had succeeded in protecting Draco during her lifetime and died doing the same thing. And she had hidden her lack of love for Lucius from him, whilst Lucius had never convinced her he was indifferent.  
  
Anger surged and boiled and whirled in him, and it should have been for himself--the words at the surface of his mind said it was--but it was not.  
  
 _Where does it come from, then?_  
  
He tried to erase the words from his consciousness by finally stabbing his finger into the book to mark the right passage and beginning to read, but the anger only rose like a spirit, losing the body of the understandable thoughts that had contained it, and coiled in the back of his mind. It was too large to be contained in words, and in moments or a month or a year it would break.  
  
To avoid the storm, which he knew dimly would change many perceptions he had carried in his mind, Lucius read.  
  
*  
  
Draco lifted his head and blinked slowly. He lay with his arms wrapped around Harry in his own bed. Harry, in turn, lay facing him with his lips slightly parted. A line of drool had worked its way out of his mouth and down his chin.  
  
Draco grimaced and wiped the liquid away, then wiped his hand on the pillowcase. He would have to call a house-elf to take care of that later.   
  
He examined the drape of his arms around Harry’s torso and one of his legs around Harry’s waist, and concluded he couldn’t move without awakening his lover. He lay back instead, shifted until he found a comfortable position for his neck against the pillows, and stared at Harry.  
  
No mark of extraordinary bravery showed in his expression, despite what had happened yesterday. The scar proclaimed the heroism of the past, the facing of Voldemort rather than the imposter. Draco doubted that, if asked, any wizard or Muggle would have said this was the face of a man who could try to rescue a traitorous lover from death.   
  
 _I wish everyone’s character was written on their faces. It would be easier to know who you should actually trust._  
  
Then Draco winced.  _And I would probably have far fewer clients if that was the case, and Harry wouldn’t have fallen in love with me._  
  
Love. That was something new to think about. Draco shifted restlessly. He had never doubted his mother loved him, but Narcissa didn’t require  _demonstrations_  of it. She simply asked Draco certain questions, watched over him from a distance, and protected his life when she needed to. Draco had reposed on her love, in turn, the way he lay on the bed right now: with utter confidence that it would support him, and no thought for it otherwise.   
  
He knew, distantly, that his father loved him, but Lucius’s emotion was an irritant since the end of the war. Draco suspected his father  _really_  sought some reflection of Narcissa’s features in his own and loved that more than he did Draco’s actual, existing form. It was one reason he had done his best to ignore Lucius in the past few years and convince others he was mad. Let him put that emotion safely out of the way, and Draco doubted it would trouble him.  
  
Severus valued his Potions skills and the dedication and good memory that enabled him to exercise them. In a way, Draco’s relationship with his old Head of House was the most comfortable he had ever known. They were both conditionally fond of one another and owed each other debts they couldn’t repay. If Draco suddenly lost his Potions skills, he knew Severus would give him up as useless. Likewise, he had no fear of that happening as long as he retained them.   
  
His clients could love him or not, so long as they continued to give him new commissions and paid him on time.  
  
This new relationship with Harry was something else again, something that took the name of love, scooped out the insides Draco had always known it to have, dropped in a new filling, and expected him to swallow it as usual.  
  
He didn’t know if he could do this. It would be difficult and new and require constant readjustment. He would make mistakes. More, Harry would expect him to apologize for his old ones and remain attentive to correcting them, such as making sure he never called Granger a Mudblood again.  
  
He didn’t know if he particularly wanted this relationship, if he could do it.  
  
But he  _was_  certain that his need for it would endure past any transient longing to be free or any anxieties about his performance. His obsession had only grown more permanent and choking when he had seen Harry again. It was a well-watered plant now--Draco pictured it as a thick, luxuriant vine tying them together in endless looping coils, covered with small blue flowers--and it would not lessen or weaken because of any effort on Harry’s part.  
  
Besides, Draco knew that trying to unroot it from himself would cause him intolerable pain. And he had an interest in avoiding pain.  
  
He laid his lips against the skin under Harry’s ear and closed his eyes.  
  
*  
  
Lucius read the passage again. His eyes stung and watered; he hadn’t been to bed, and he knew he needed to. Sleep always helped him recover his emotional balance after an unexpected shaking like the one he had received when the imposter kidnapped Draco. How could he appear before Potter and Weasley with a lined face, red eyes, and his breath coming short?   
  
But there was a certain point where good intentions ran out before physical incapacity, and he could not remove his eyes from the page.  
  
 _I know that I am the only one who truly loves Draco, that iron bands bind him to me and me to him. Let him leave me for a hundred years and come back with all his beauty fallen to dust; I would know him still, and find the beauty hiding like the dust of sleep in the corners of his eyes. Let him spurn my love in his pride as an independent man and cry aloud that none of my care in his childhood mattered to him; I will watch over him from a distance. Let him bend his bones with iron, take Polyjuice, put a knife to his throat to try and spill the blood; I will be at hand to prevent fatal accidents and give him back his true shape, which my hands and eyes know so well.  
  
Lucius could never understand a bond like this. It is unique, not only to mother and son, but to me and Draco. Blood and iron, flesh and bone, to the end, which will be bitter, for this much love cannot help but be.  
  
Lucius does not love our son._  
  
He had read the words before. At the time, he had closed his eyes and bowed his head in humility and agreed with his wife. She had gone into death and darkness that Lucius had hesitated in front of, despite being the one who had dragged his family into devotion to the Dark Lord, because she loved Draco. He had never once dreamed of doing such a thing. How, then, could he claim that he loved Draco and desired only what was best for him?  
  
But now, he knew otherwise. The panic that had gripped him during Draco’s kidnapping and had ruined his attempt to locate the imposter’s mind was a sign of love. So was the way he had been willing to ally with Potter and Weasley.  
  
 _That is a step Narcissa never could have taken. She was so sure she was the only one who loved Draco that she never would have looked for help to save him._  
  
So there was a limit to his wife’s competence, her magical power, her deadly coolness.  
  
And hadn’t that always been true? Narcissa never looked into Lucius’s soul and saw that what lurked there was not so different from what lurked in her own. She was unable to recognize the strength of others, even when it would have complemented her own strength. She talked of Severus, her sister, the Dark Lord, everyone but Draco as a playing piece in a game she had constructed and was mistress of. It had been a mistake, and ultimately what killed her. She was incapable of seeing her own limits.  
  
Lucius, at least, knew what it was like to live with weakness and inability. He had spent the last seven years doing it.  
  
The anger blew across his mind in a howling wind now, thick and stinging with particles of contempt like sand.  
  
 _Why did I feel so inferior to her? Why did she dominate my life for the past years the way she has? Why was I more involved in paying tribute to her love of Draco than in exercising my own?  
  
Why did I ever take every word she wrote as truth?_  
  
The anger turned and lashed the other way. Lucius dug his fingers into the pages and stared at his wife’s letters. Some revelation was coming up on him, galloping so fast that he shook with it.  
  
He didn’t know what it was yet, but in a few moments the storm would break, and then he would.  
  
*  
  
Harry set his heels and waited. He hadn’t thought there would be a conflict with Draco quite this soon, but--well, it had arrived, and it wasn’t as though he had expected their relationship to be perfect from this point forwards anyway.  
  
 _Though it would have been nice if it was_ , he told himself, and then settled for breathing quietly and watching Draco’s eyes.  
  
Draco folded his arms and stared at the floor halfway between him and Harry, which was occupied by the dining room table. They were in what seemed to be the Malfoys’ second-best dining room, less formidable than the one Harry had eaten in when he was first guarding Draco. Polished oak made the table, Harry thought, or some sweet-scented wood that had much the same shades of brown; he kept smelling some drifting fragrance that vanished again when he tried to locate it. Nice, but not interesting enough to hold the attention of someone like Draco for this long. Harry, standing on the other side of it, slid his hands into his robe pockets and went on breathing slowly and silently.  
  
“Why do you want this?” Draco’s voice had a cracked, tinny sound to it, like the kind Harry had heard coming out of some Muggle tellies. Usually  _after_  Dark wizards tried enchanting them in some way. “You’re a private person, you’ve told me. You like keeping things quiet. You even resent the articles the  _Prophet_  writes about the arrests you’ve made.” His eyes rose and locked on Harry’s, and Harry half-wanted to hug him because of the look of confused vulnerability in them, and half-wanted to laugh. “So why this?”  
  
“Two reasons,” Harry said. “It’s one of the few things that could possibly convince other people you’re serious about this--we’re serious about this--and make them give us a bit of respect instead of cynically assuming I’ve taken you back because I like pain and our relationship will fall apart in a month or so. I would have thought you’d be in favor of that, considering how much you like people to admire you and give you the time of day instead of turning their backs on you.” He paused, but Draco’s open, pleading gaze never wavered.  
  
“And second,” Harry said softly, “it’s one of the few things that will convince me you are serious about apologizing.”  
  
Draco stared at the table again, though from the motion of his arms Harry imagined he had clenched his hands together. “I‘ve already apologized, fought for you, and slept in the same bed holding you, which I‘ve never done for anyone else,” he said. “I don’t know what else I can do.”  
  
“This.”  
  
Draco winced and lifted his head again. At least this time his eyes had lost some of their antipathetic glitter, and he looked more or less resigned. Harry had known he couldn’t expect joy. “You’re relentless, are you?”  
  
“As much as you were in hurting me in the first place, yes.” Harry rocked forwards instead of shifting his weight the way he wanted to. As much as he loved Draco, he still found it hard to  _trust_  him, and he knew Draco would take advantage of any sign of weakness; in a way, he wouldn’t be able to help himself. “I think I have to be, or  _you_  won’t respect  _me_.”  
  
Draco ground his teeth. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I’m not asking to be let out of it, Harry. I can only imagine how many people will be after me if I don’t do this, from your friends to the papers. There would be some people who would swallow the story I offered to the  _Prophet_  and then turn right around and accuse me of demeaning you.” He shook his head like a horse with the bit cutting into his mouth. “But--not right now. Let’s have a few weeks with each other first, please? Where we don’t have to do anything like this?” His voice soared, pleading, and then he cracked his teeth into each other as if that would make a better sound.  
  
Harry waited until he was certain Draco had recovered from his own dramatics and was actually looking at him. Then he shook his head.  
  
“Why  _not_?” There was a time Draco’s cry would have shattered Harry’s heart, but he had learned to judge him better since he started acknowledging there were flaws in his idol. This sound was more petulance than pain.   
  
And Merlin knew Harry had known more than enough childish criminals in his day, more upset about being caught than they were about the magnitude of their crimes.  
  
“Because,” Harry said, “I can’t trust you until you make this apology, and I don’t want to delay trusting you.”  
  
Draco bit his lip. Then he took a step forwards and spoke in a smooth, persuasive voice. “Harry, I knew I had made the wrong decision almost as soon as I went to the papers. I couldn’t deny it after I received your letter, but even before that, I was muttering to myself and found it hard to look at the pictures above the articles. The moment of my greatest triumph was nearly my greatest downfall. The colors only brightened around me after I thought I had a chance of winning you back, and as painful as the lesson Faustine forced on me was, I went through with it and got used to it. I’ve learned my lesson. Please don’t make me do this.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said.  
  
“Why does it have to be  _this_  that teaches you to trust me?” Draco ran a hand through his hair, disordering it, a gesture that let Harry know exactly how upset he was--or a gesture that he had carefully planned to show how upset he was. Harry still couldn’t be sure, and he hated the feeling that he was constantly the subject of manipulations going on behind Draco’s mask, a game his lover was so involved in he barely noticed he was playing it anymore. Harry had no hope of being able to stop the game completely, but he thought he could at least lessen the degree to which he was subject to it. “Why not something else? Some private gesture--”  
  
“Because this is what I want,” Harry interrupted, finally growing tired of Draco’s excuses. “For you to accompany me to the papers and for us to give an exclusive interview to Rita Skeeter explaining we were both wrong and we’ve forgiven each other.”  
  
Draco’s eyes fell again, and he was silent.  
  
“Unless,” Harry added, and he hadn’t realized he could add so much menace to his voice, “this price is too much for you to pay, and you’re happier turning away from me and separating again. I’m sure I would manage to learn to live without you--”  
  
Draco lunged at him, and forgot the table was in the middle, and half-sprawled across it. Harry leaped back anyway and stood watching him, swallowing a little.  _I didn’t mean to make him look foolish. We’ll have to see if he manages to recover, and to forgive me that._  
  
Draco pulled himself slowly back to his feet and shook his head as slowly. His eyes looked like waves drowning a gravel shore, they were so gray. “And you saw the way I reacted even to the words,” he said quietly. “Harry, I  _can’t_  let you go. You’re part of me to such an extent--” He held out his hands as if together they could encompass the world. “We’ll have to get used to each other. We’ll have to try to do something other than inflict wounds on one another. You’ll have to get used to my having some hard times with your friends before we manage to settle into a truce.” He closed his eyes and bowed his head, an arrow-keen smile curving his mouth as he did so. “And I’ll have to do as you ask.”  
  
Harry didn’t step around the table and embrace him. He would have liked to, but he doubted it was the right moment for that. He nodded briskly and turned towards the front doors of the Manor instead, as if he had never doubted Draco’s decision. “Let’s go, then.”  
  
*  
  
Lucius thrust the diary onto the table next to him and closed his eyes. The storm had broken, and revelations blew through his mind like a tsunami at sea, bits of breaking and tossing foam that touched him briefly and were gone.  
  
 _Narcissa said that only she could love and protect Draco, and that she was certain I never loved her.  
  
She was wrong.  
  
She said that she was the only one who could prevent harm from coming to Draco, and that her plans would always afford her a way of doing so.  
  
She was wrong.  
  
I’ve confined myself to the study of her diaries for a decade because I thought I needed to understand her, and that was the only way I could do so, and that I had to make up for her death somehow.   
  
I was wrong._  
  
Lucius opened his eyes, and though he knew that neither Draco nor Severus would have seen anything but a man sitting in a chair and glaring furiously at an empty portrait frame, the whirling rage that filled his skull and burst out in a fiercely independent declaration was enough for him.  
  
 _Narcissa’s death was the direct result of one of her own plans. She thought she could seduce the Dark Lord with her beauty and convince him not to hurt Draco that way. Instead, the only thing she did was rouse Bellatrix’s jealousy and earn her own gruesome death--and if she really believed that she was the only one who could protect Draco, she left her beloved son vulnerable. She was arrogant when she assumed that none of her plans could fail.  
  
I love her still, but she was neither a perfect woman nor an irretrievable loss. I can do more than spend the rest of my life mourning her._  
  
Lucius let his head fall against the back of the chair, and breathed.  
  
*  
  
Draco stiffened his shoulders. The instinct to bolt back down the corridor and out of the building the  _Daily Prophet_  was using as its headquarters this week (their funds had become rather unsettled with the recent lawsuit) was stronger than he had counted on.   
  
And he didn’t want to look weak in front of Harry.  
  
Strangely enough, he was coming to accept that the best way not to do that was to make himself vulnerable.  
  
Harry stopped in front of the small room where Rita Skeeter worked and put his hand on the knob, examining the name written across the glass panel in the door as if he needed to make sure of the spelling. He took a single deep breath that made his hair, plastered against the back of his neck, flutter like the trembling feathers of a wind-borne bird.  
  
And suddenly Draco understood that  _he_  was nervous, too, and perhaps even doubtful of his own strength to go through with such a thing.  
  
Draco found himself relaxing, his shoulders dropping again and his head rising. He thought he could allow himself to be vulnerable as long as he had someone who was equally so. He would have hated to endure a lover like himself, or like the man he had been before Harry: cold, emotionless, indomitable.  
  
A thought stirred in him, cold and sluggish.  _Perhaps that will even make up for all the apologizing I have to do. If Harry looks at me with approval and lets me fuck him again for this, then I can think of it as a bargain. Power for power, a sacrifice for a return._  
  
None of that actually made it easier for him to walk into the office when the door opened and he saw Skeeter waiting at her desk with glittering spectacles and a curious, hungry smile.  
  
But the way Harry turned to check over his shoulder for a moment, as if Draco were a new part of himself that he needed to make sure was in order before he could move, did.


	30. Speak It From Your Souls

Harry leaned something about love and forgiveness as he watched Draco stumble over his answers to Rita Skeeter’s questions.  
  
Skeeter started with a poisoned smile and the most direct question Harry had ever heard from her the moment she understood what they were there for. “Are you saying that your previous story about Mr. Potter was all a lie, then? That you didn’t really seduce him and he wasn’t broken when you left?”  
  
Draco’s face flushed, and Harry saw the unhappy little boy he had known in Hogwarts all over again. Then Draco swallowed. What that swallow took care of—anger, grief, bitterness, pride—Harry didn’t know, but it let Draco say in a steady voice, “Yes. Whilst we slept together, it wasn’t a seduction.” He tossed Harry a brief glance from beneath lowered eyelids, to which Harry didn’t respond. He knew Draco was asking him for permission to elaborate on exactly how much of a mutual seduction had led up to their first time together, but he didn’t care to have Skeeter know that. Draco turned back to the reporter with a new grimness etched in the lines along his face. “And he wasn’t broken.”  
  
Skeeter hummed under her breath and scribbled something down on the parchment in front of her, then whisked another piece over it before they could see what she’d written. Her smile was professional when she looked up again, at least as much as a shark’s could be called professional. “Then you were?”  
  
Harry had to admire the way Draco drew himself up at that and fixed her with a glare so deadly that Skeeter blinked and lifted her quill as if it were a wand. “No,  _I was not_ ,” he said.  
  
“Well…” Skeeter cocked her head as if considering whether or not to believe Draco, and then hastily nodded and scribbled something down when Draco growled. “Yes, yes, of course,” she said, and recovered herself with a small pat to her hair and a sharp little breath. “Will you retract the statements you made about Mr. Potter? I believe ‘fragile little flower’ was among them.”  
  
Draco nodded once, tightly, and his left hand flexed in the air next to him. Whether that was meant as a grasp for help or not, Harry’s resolve to let Draco go through this completely on his own couldn’t survive it.  
  
He cleared his throat, stepped up beside Draco, and caught his hand. He didn’t swing their hands ostentatiously in Skeeter’s face, instead smoothing his fingers over Draco’s knuckles down at his side, but he saw Skeeter’s eyes greedily fasten on them anyway. “I’m not fragile,” he said, “or not any more than we all are in moments of defeat. For example, I remember a time when I could have called you fragile, Ms. Skeeter—or at least not as strong as glass.”  
  
Skeeter’s spine stiffened with outrage once at the reference to when Hermione had trapped her beetle form in a jar, and then folded down again. Her smile was decidedly more brittle this time when she said, “You’ve learned some wit in the last few years, Mr. Potter. Would you like to give your side of the story?”  
  
 _She always did like me best as prey_. It was one reason Harry had known his stepping in would help spare Draco. He managed a slight smile for Skeeter in return. “Yes, I would,” he said. “Both of the original story and what followed.”  
  
He heard Draco gasp beside him and then catch his breath. Harry didn’t look at him—he wouldn’t give Skeeter the satisfaction, and in any case he wanted to keep her attention firmly on himself—but he knew Draco’s face would have turned to stone in the next moment.  
  
That was still a change. In the past, Draco would have been so focused on manipulating Harry that he wouldn’t have forgotten himself enough to gasp. Harry could put up with Draco’s need for self-control in part because Draco was a little less guarded now. He had let Harry into his heart enough to make a mark there.  
  
 _That’s what you’ll never understand, bitch, ask questions as you will_ , Harry thought contentedly in Skeeter’s direction. Maybe she had noticed the triumph in his eyes, because she paused before she asked her next one.  
  
“How did you feel after Mr. Malfoy left you?” She suddenly made a moue and blinked innocently at him. “Forgive me, Mr. Potter, I’m presuming.  _Did_  Mr. Malfoy leave you the first time?”  
  
“He did,” Harry said, “and it was essentially as he described it.” He saw no need to make Draco eat all his words. Some of them were true. “But his motives for that were otherwise than what he told you. Rather than trying to break me, he was trying to see how much I could stand. He never intended to abandon me permanently.”  
  
“ _Really_?” Skeeter was darting her gaze between him and Draco, so hungry for carrion that she reminded Harry of a vulture. He curled his lip, mentally contrasting her with the only other journalist he knew well, Luna Lovegood.  _People can enter this profession for more than one reason, just as they can become Aurors for more than one reason, but Merlin, what a difference_. “He told a very convincing series of lies, then.”  
  
“He did,” Harry said calmly. “But you must have seen that for yourself, Ms. Skeeter, that sometimes people create unaccountable, elaborate deceptions in order to protect their emotional truths.”  
  
His sarcasm sailed over her head; in fact, Skeeter mistook his words for sympathy and preened a moment. “And what about your lies?” she asked.  
  
“In this case,” Harry pointed out peacefully, “I merely said nothing to the papers. I don’t know that that counts as a lie.”  
  
“But you vanished,” Skeeter pursued, “and the Auror Department was quick to say that you’d gone somewhere they couldn’t trace you. An owl I sent to you with a request for an interview came back baffled. Where were you, and why did you have to go there if the circumstances of your parting with Mr. Malfoy weren’t what he described?”  
  
“I went to a private place to recover my strength,” Harry said evenly. “And no, you  _aren’t_  owed a description of that,” he added, as Skeeter’s eyes shone rapaciously and she opened her mouth to comment. “What matters is that I recovered it and thought about matters, and I decided to forgive Draco.” He turned fully towards Draco for the first time, and surprised a complex expression on his face, which of course vanished the moment Draco noticed him noticing it. “And he’ll have to be the one to tell you some more about his lies and my forgiveness.” Harry wanted to spare Draco some of the burden, but he had no intention of becoming the sole defender of Draco’s actions whilst Draco stood by dumb and watching.  
  
*  
  
Draco wondered absently if love was meant to be both torment and sweetness at once. He had long felt both when he looked at Harry, but the torment had come from fears of Harry’s defeating him and the sweetness from moments when he won instead. He didn’t think that was a description of it now.  
  
 _I don’t know what to say. Doesn’t he see that?_  
  
But Harry did, because he’d moved in at a moment when Draco was grimly struggling and spared him. Even the way he turned towards him now, with an expectant look and a slight gesture to send Skeeter’s eyes to him, was a compliment of sorts, Draco thought. He trusted that Draco would have recovered his own strength in that short amount of time.  
  
Draco still didn’t find it all that comforting.  
  
He took a deep breath and said some of the hardest words of his life. “I was wrong. I went to the papers like that out of insecurity, because I didn’t know if Harry l—cared for me and I couldn’t wait to find out. I was angry and ashamed of my own vulnerability. That was one reason I lied about his.”  
  
“Vulnerability?”  
  
Voldemort’s snake had had more taste and tact than Skeeter did, Draco thought. “I am sure you know my reputation,” he said tightly. “Not many lovers, and the ones I entertained never stayed for long.” He winced when he saw the smugness lighting Skeeter’s face, but he knew he would have to say worse things—more bruising to his pride—before he was done. “I found myself caring too much, and—“ There were some things it was impossible he should say, especially before he had explained them to Harry, so he changed his next words to, “And this one was different. I knew from the beginning. What Harry and I have is too  _intense_  to be properly described. My revenge for feeling vulnerable was the same way. I want you to print an apology and a retraction, and then I want you to say that Harry and I are lovers now, and I’m content to have it so.”  
  
He probably should have been more passionate on that last declaration, he thought absently. There was the chance that Skeeter wouldn’t believe him. But all the air seemed to have left his lungs, and it was a struggle not to simply bow his head between his knees and weep his way out of breath.  
  
He glanced to the side, wondering how Harry had taken it. Probably he would encounter a frown for not being heroic in his honesty--  
  
And instead, he found Harry’s eyes shining like leaves with the sun behind them.  
  
Draco’s breath caught and he smiled back, even as he reflected,  _He admires the oddest things._  
  
*  
  
Harry doubted that Ron or Hermione would have found Draco’s explanation adequate. He was rather dreading the moment he faced them and defended his decision to date Draco, in fact. But for Draco to have explained so much without giving enough specifics that either of them need feel embarrassed about it—  
  
For him to have said that he felt  _vulnerable_  after he had sex with Harry, an admission Harry had thought he would rather have died than make—  
  
And for him to say these words to Rita Skeeter, knowing she would doubtless twist them until they broke and then print them in the  _Prophet_  for everyone to see—  
  
Well, Harry was more than content.  
  
He drew Draco’s hand to his lips and held it there a moment, letting his eyes say many things Skeeter would not be able to interpret. Draco flushed richly. Harry smiled and turned back to Skeeter, who, sure enough, was staring between them in confusion and frustration. None of that kept her from orienting on him the moment he spoke again. She  _was_  too much of a celebrity-worshipper, not to realize when she was being manipulated by her own fascination with someone famous.  
  
“I feel the same,” he said simply. “Draco and I may not succeed as lovers, the same way that there was once doubt I would destroy Voldemort.” He got two things at once by pronouncing the name: the joy of seeing Skeeter flinch, and the assurance that she would probably print his words exactly as he spoke them, because they were the kind of grand, dramatic flourish she loved and thought he should always make. “But we are going to try.” He leaned towards Skeeter, never varying his polite smile or his tone as he did so. “And if you print imputations about us instead of listening to  _our_  words on the matter, then I am going to cut your fingers off and use them as toothpicks.”  
  
Skeeter froze, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly parted. Even her  _terror_  held a kind of fascination, Harry thought, disgusted. She would let him get away with things she would have snapped at Draco for, because fame made the difference.  
  
 _Somehow._  
  
*  
  
Draco had thought that the interview was the hardest part, that after he talked to Skeeter he would begin to feel an easing of the tight pressure around his lungs and the frozen air that had gathered in his throat.  
  
He had been wrong, because the moment they stepped outside the  _Prophet’s_  quarters, Harry’s friends accosted them.  
  
“Harry!” Weasley had managed to do nothing about his freckles and his violently red hair in the interval since Draco had last seen him. Not that he would have managed, probably, but it was the spirit of trying that counted. He gave Draco a pointed look of distrust, then focused on Harry. “The only thing Malfoy could tell me was that you left  _that_  house in  _this_  Malfoy’s company.” He shook his head, lips pursed. “Why would you do that?”  
  
“I’d like to know that, too, Harry.” Granger had her arms folded, and there was a delicate chill to her voice that reminded Draco of the way his mother had sometimes sounded, when word came to her that Draco hadn’t been as graceful or gracious or conscientious as she thought proper for him. Her eyes never left Harry’s face.  
  
Harry gave a single shiver beside Draco. Draco doubted he would have felt it if he hadn’t been standing so close. He grimaced in resignation, knowing what  _that_  meant. Harry was afraid of his friends’ opinions. He had said that he wanted his affair with Draco to be in front of all the world, but surely he wouldn’t mean in front of two people he loved who would violently disapprove.  
  
Reluctantly, Draco started to step away from his lover’s side.  
  
His hand was caught and held, and Harry spoke with a calm resonance that made Draco stare at him. “Ron, Hermione, I appreciate all you’ve done for me. I love you very much. There’s no one I trust as much as I trust you.”  
  
Draco caught his breath in a jealous hitch. He could ask many other things of Harry, including a second chance, but he reckoned trust was a precious commodity right now.  
  
“And I’ve said that first, so that you would remember it and listen to me now,” Harry said in a lower voice. “My decision to date Draco is none of your bloody business, either to interfere with or to discourage me from. If you want to offer courtesy to Draco and congratulations to me, of course I will be happy to accept it. Until you can, I won’t listen to another word on the subject. Understood?”  
  
And of course it was not, and of course Granger and Weasley immediately began to protest, but none of that changed the way that Draco felt about Harry just then.  
  
 _He’s protecting me. He’s insisting they grant me the treatment any other lover would receive.  
  
He’s not going to hold a grudge._  
  
Harry looked at him once, smiled, and then faced the deluge of complaints from his friends. Draco barely stopped himself from leaning against Harry’s side; he would have, if they weren’t in public and he didn’t have his (tattered, tarnished) reputation to think of.  
  
 _He really does love me._  
  
*  
  
“But mate, he  _betrayed_  you.”  
  
“And I forgave him,” Harry said. He raised an eyebrow when Ron continued to stare at him. “Surely it’s the forgiveness of the person affected by the betrayal who matters most, and not that person’s best friend?”  
  
Ron huffed unhappily and crossed his arms. “I just don’t want to see you hurt,” he muttered. “And he did hurt you.”  
  
“And it’s up to me to say when his atonement’s enough and I’m going to accept it,” Harry said. He intended to keep the fragility of his relationship with Draco right now, and the fact that he had demanded some proof of love and strength from him, from Ron and Hermione. He wanted them to be together in the sight of the world, yes. But there was a line between requiring Draco to prove that he was not ashamed of Harry and embarrassing him to death. “And you hurt him by refusing to assign Aurors to the Manor, Ron.”  
  
“He wouldn’t  _accept_  them—“  
  
“You could have insisted,” Harry said, moving slightly to the left to stomp on Draco’s foot; he had heard Draco draw an indignant breath, no doubt ready to protest. “You’ve insisted with other people before, because you cared more about their lives than about their protests.”  
  
“The Aurors probably couldn’t have stopped that imposter anyway—“  
  
“I’m an Auror. I did.”  
  
Ron tugged his arms tighter across his chest, as if he were cold, and regarded Harry with a forlorn expression. Harry looked back, composed and determined. It was a look he knew Ron would recognize; Harry had given it to him before when he had done dangerous things that only someone with his fame or his magical power could do, and Ron had had to stay behind. It said he respected Ron, he loved Ron, but he wasn’t going to let Ron’s opinions rule his life.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said.  
  
“Then—“ Ron’s face lit up like a firework.  
  
“No,” Harry said firmly. “I’m sorry for causing you distress, not for loving Draco.”  
  
Ron muttered and kicked at the ground in a way that would have been more convincing if there was slush or snow there to kick. Harry had no doubts that he would come around in the end, however. Ron’s temper burned bright and hot, but he held few grudges that lasted long. And, yes, his family’s grudge against the Malfoys had been one of those, but Ron had shown that he had more maturity and more thoughtfulness in the past few days than Harry had ever given him credit for.  
  
 _Yes, he’ll come around._  
  
Harry then turned to face his greatest challenge. Hermione’s mouth was clamped shut, and white lines surrounded her nostrils.   
  
“You can’t fool me, Harry,” she said, and her voice was soft in a way she no doubt intended for him to interpret as deadly. “I was in your head when you were orbiting him like a comet. I  _know_  what you thought about him.”  
  
“ _Thought_ , good choice of word,” Harry said, and let his voice become light and sarcastic. Ron blinked at him, probably surprised Harry had chosen to sound like that. But it was the only way of dealing with Hermione, Harry thought. He loved her dearly, but her biggest problem was that she didn’t admit her  _equals_  existed. Harry had to show her he was as clever and careful as she was about his own life. “As in, the past tense. Yes, you know what I thought about Draco. You don’t know how my mind has changed now.”  
  
Hermione shot a glance at Draco that was so hostile Harry stepped in front of him. Draco promptly braced a hand in the small of his back and shoved. Harry grunted as he staggered aside, and Draco stepped up to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. He narrowed his eyes, and Harry understood.   
  
 _Protect me, but don’t coddle me._  
  
“You know what he did to you,” Hermione said, low and precise.  
  
“Rather better than you, I imagine, since I lived through it,” Harry remarked, and rubbed the back of his neck, where tension had cramped his muscles.  
  
“How can you forgive him, knowing that?” Hermione was usually afraid to let her temper out of control, but it shone in her eyes now. “What he did to you was insane. Unforgivable. Malicious—“  
  
“How could you forgive Ron for some of the insults you flung at each other during your arguments?” Harry inquired.  
  
“Ron and I didn’t  _mean_  them.” Hermione tossed her head. Her eyes held a different flash now: fear and loneliness. Harry hid his compassion. Another two things to know about Hermione: she hated change, and it was best not to show that her arguments affected you in any way or she’d try to overwhelm you.   
  
“I don’t know about that,” Harry said. “More than once he came to me and swore he was done with you. And then he went back to you and you got on. Whether you forgave or forgot those insults, you lived with them. I’ll live with what Draco did to me.”  
  
“You can’t accept it in the same way!” For a moment, Harry thought Hermione would fold her arms and stomp her foot on the floor the way she used to whenever Harry or Ron disobeyed some rule in Hogwarts. “It’s not just an argument!”  
  
“No, it’s not,” Harry said. “And the row that split you and Ron up not long before your marriage wasn’t, either.”  
  
“We settled that.” Hermione seemed to sigh the words out. Her arms had dropped to her sides and stiffened, and her eyes had taken on yet another sheen, this time of frustration. “It took hard work and time, but we settled it.”  
  
“Then why can’t you accept that it’ll take hard work and time with Draco, and I accept that?” Harry raised an eyebrow. Hermione blinked, which made him wonder how much more pointed and disdainful his gesture had become since he’d been around Draco.  
  
“Because—because Ron is fundamentally a good person,” Hermione said, with the air of someone breaking through a final deadlock, “and Malfoy  _isn’t_.”  
  
And at that point, Draco’s reserve, which had been truly heroic so far, gave way.  
  
*  
  
“I may not fit your definition of a good person, Granger,” Draco said, and the words weren’t hard to speak when he knew how much they would annoy her, “but I know what it is to love.”  
  
Granger only stuck her lip out and put her head back as if she didn’t believe him. Draco wondered idly how in the world Harry put up with her. That expression made her look as if someone had slapped her in the face with a sack of wet feces.  
  
“I love my father,” Draco said. “I loved my mother, when she was alive. I love Severus, in his own way. And I love Harry in  _my_  own way. Those are all different from your great and pure and faultless love, of course.” He had seen the way Harry looked when he was discussing the Granger-Weasley pair’s arguments; someday he would have to get Harry to tell him the story of  _why_  they had fallen in love. “But they’re mine, and they’re real, and I won’t stand by and hear you disparage them.”  
  
“You  _hurt_  Harry.” Her voice was probably intended to make him quiver. Draco snorted. His mother had done worse when she was half out of her wits with fear.  
  
“That I did. And he chose to try to get over it and give me a second chance. That’s his choice, not yours.”  
  
“Harry—“ Granger spun towards him.   
  
“No,” Harry said. He laid a hand on Draco’s arm and then leaned down as if he wanted to put his weight on it for some reason. “I know you love me and don’t want me hurt. But I was, and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. What they can try to do is make sure the rest of my life is as good and sweet as possible.” He smiled sidelong at Draco. “Draco will do that by loving me and letting me love him and doing his best to conquer his natural instincts.”  
  
Draco felt a soft throb for a moment in his chest, rather like the beginning of arousal in his groin.  _It is somewhat a comfort to have a lover who knows me so well._  
  
“And you’ll do it by becoming reconciled to Draco, or to deafening silence on the subject.” Harry sounded smug, as if he knew Granger would consent to anything rather than silence. “Now, excuse us, if you would. I need to get to the Auror Department and let them know I’m still alive. I understand there’s been a bit of doubt on the subject.”  
  
One thing about Harry, Draco thought as he hastened after his lover down the steps: objectionable friends or not, fanaticism for martyrdom or not, he knew how to make an exit in  _grand_  style.


	31. And Where the Offense Is

“I know you.”  
  
Severus laid his fingertips together and regarded the man in front of him with a pleasant expression. He knew it would have driven  _him_  mad to be smiled at by someone who had dumped a Curse Potion on him, so he did it now.  
  
The imposter shifted a restless step or two nearer. His nostrils were flared, which only emphasized his likeness to Draco—though, Severus had to admit, not to the Draco he had seen about the Manor in the last few days. His hands clenched tight around the shaft of the wand that was not made of hawthorn. Strange, Severus thought idly, that of all the similarities he had mastered, he would neglect to fulfill that one. Of course, prowess in magic was important to him, since he would need all the magic he could master to make himself look like Draco. And if he could not find a hawthorn wand that would respond to him, he had doubtless chosen the most powerful wand that would.  
  
“Of course you do,” Severus said, and layered his voice with many fine shadings of irony. This meeting was not a coincidence. He had worked improvements of his own behind the Malfoys’ wards in the past few days; he had long thought it foolish of Lucius to rely on bloodline wards as his primary protection. But Lucius had been too preoccupied by some private revelation to notice Severus’s tinkering or object to it. “You have most of his memories, too, don’t you?”  
  
The imposter edged nearer still. Just now, he had a sharp edge to his sneer that was unlike Draco. Severus had seen it often in the mirror, though.  
  
 _The dangers of sympathy.  
  
(The dangers of sympathy? Lily said in his mind, her eyes wide and her hair flying behind her. But sympathy is what makes us friends, Severus. It’s what lets us look beyond appearances and find something in each other more important than beauty.  
  
She had not said aloud what they were both thinking at that moment: that Severus would never be able to acquire admiring looks for his beauty alone, and so needed to depend on sympathy.  
  
But Lily was dead, and Severus had done his “duty” to protect the only reflection she had left alive in the world, that black-haired son of hers. He had no reason to let the memories trouble him)._  
  
“I would have had more of his memories still,” said the imposter in an aggrieved tone, “if you hadn’t interrupted me.”  
  
“You needed to be interrupted.” Severus leaned his back against the bole of a tree. They stood not far outside the Malfoy estates, in the “buffer” zone secured against the intrusion of Muggles or vengeful wizards with spells implanted in the soil and vegetation. Severus had no fear of being attacked. Not only would the Curse Potion inhibit some of the imposter’s major spells, but he had ingested enough of his own brewing to ensure that he would walk away from this meeting unscathed. “I have no need for a substitute Draco. The one I have now is worn to the grooves of my fingers and my uses and my teaching. I prefer to keep him.”  
  
The imposter’s face quivered, and then relaxed. A terrifying madness shone in his eyes for a moment. Still Severus did not worry. Madness was not more powerful than the invisible compulsion, the condemnation, of the Curse Potion.  
  
“You know,” said the imposter. “What I am.”  
  
“I suspect,” Severus corrected him. “I have no need to hear the whole of the story, which I am sure is long-drawn and disgusting in several details. But yes, I know that you are someone who became obsessed with Draco Malfoy and changed your life so that you might become him. I know that the wards permitted you passage into the house because, to them, you were Draco.” He thought, but did not say,  _There has been far too much becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy around here._  
  
“You must know the passion that drives me.” The imposter whispered the words and came nearer and nearer. Severus would have recoiled from the hunger in his eyes if he were a weaker man. “You have experienced the same thing yourself. You have seen gifts go unused, seen beauty  _wasted_. And I know that you dislike Potter. You don’t want to see him throwing his legs around the waist of your favorite student, do you? You’ll help me. You’ll—“  
  
Severus experienced a flash of pure disgust. Yes, he had once known an obsession like that: the obsession with Lily, and then with wishing he had prevented her death when news came of what the Dark Lord had done. It was the sort of emotion that refashioned the world around it, so that people became helpful or irritating or stupid or beautiful simply because of where they stood in relation to the perceiver.  
  
But the moment he had realized that such a perception existed and controlled his emotional reactions, Severus had fought to disable it. He preferred reality, no matter how prickly and painful. Pretending a cushion of wet moss was a throne would not make it one.  
  
And so he had overthrown his obsession with Lily. The memories remained to him, and always would, because the uprooting of what had given his life sustenance and anchoring had left gaping wounds. But he had not given in to them.   
  
Best of all was to be free of obsession, as he was and he was beginning to suspect that Lucius was. Second best was to make it livable, as Draco and Potter had. But Severus had nothing but contempt for someone who surrendered the way this man had.  
  
 _Powerful in magic, strong in Legilimency, with the resources and time to pursue this task, and he can think of no better fate than to become a second-rate imitation of a man himself obsessed with bedding the hero?_  
  
“I will not help you,” he said. “There are worse fates for Draco than becoming Potter’s plaything, and death is one of them.”  
  
“But if I destroyed him, it would only be to make him better,” said the stranger eagerly. “Like melting down an ornament of mostly base metal to release the silver inside it.”  
  
“You were not able to come up with any other way to secure his memories than forced Legilimency,” Severus said. “You can imitate neither his architectural talent nor his passion for Potter. No, I find nothing valuable about you, but only the tarnish waiting for more fingers to multiply it.”  
  
The imposter lunged at him, but Severus flicked his wand and he bounced away, crashing heavily into a spiny bush.  
  
Severus whirled and Apparated back to the house. His improvements to the wards let him pass in and out soundlessly, but would keep the imposter out should he attempt to follow—  
  
Which, yes, he had. Severus smiled as tingling sensations struck the small of his back, the wards reverberating but holding. The imposter was a genius, but he had devoted too much of his time and effort to imitation. He did not know potions in the way that Severus did.  
  
 _If I had an imitator, maybe he would._  
  
Then Severus, who had landed in his lab, laughed aloud.  _If I had an imitator, and a competent one, he would kill me before I began to suspect his existence._  
  
*  
  
“And they still haven’t decided what the imposter is, have they?” Draco leaned back against the pillows in his bed and stretched. To the casual eye, he’d look bored, but Harry knew that he was concealing nervousness under the gesture. He took a moment to silently marvel at his own knowledge.  
  
Then he remembered how dearly that knowledge had been purchased, and bowed his head over the notes that Kingsley had given him until he could compose himself.  
  
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “they think they have a good guess.”  
  
Draco immediately rolled over to face him. Harry kept his eyes on the notes, delaying and thus making sweeter the moment when he could glance up and see Draco’s gaze focused and glittering on him.   
  
It still shook him to feel the clenching greed in his body when he met that gaze—the same way that he loved and yet resented the way his head turned automatically towards Draco when he entered a room with him in it, or the way he came out of the Floo into the Manor that evening oriented towards the bedroom already. He had tried to imagine, yesterday, what would happen to him if Draco died, and silence and terror had clasped his throat and tried to drown him.   
  
Obsession and love were weaknesses as much as they were strengths. Harry hoped he would learn to live with both.  
  
“Well?” Draco demanded.  
  
Harry had lingered too long in that silence. He looked up, and drank in the light coming from Draco’s eyes for a few moments before he managed to speak, his voice a bit breathless. “They think he’s someone ordinary,” he said. “Someone who became obsessed with you, who wanted to  _be_  you—“  
  
“Then he couldn’t be someone ordinary,” Draco said in a miffed tone, and turned his head away. Harry smiled and studied the line of his profile before responding.  
  
“Someone who wasn’t famous. Someone who didn’t have close relatives or friends to miss him, or someone would have reported him missing by now.”  
  
Draco huffed a sigh. “Yes, all right, I’m being stalked by a common lunatic,” he said, and waved an impatient hand. “You might as well tell me the truth.”  
  
Harry concealed a laugh behind his hand. He knew Draco was going out of his way to amuse him, but the very fact that he was, Harry thought, was a hopeful sign. Draco had never cared about making up to him before. He had seemed to assume that the way he wanted to act was also sufficient to draw Harry.  
  
 _Or it’s another sign of his continuing obsession with me, too._  
  
Harry ran his fingers through his hair to distract himself from scowling. He kept bumping up against that thought, and each time he had to flinch anew and think how different the love they shared was from the emotion between Ron and Hermione. On the other hand, it would hardly do to forget it, after the betrayal Draco had inflicted on him.  
  
“Not as bad as that,” he replied. “You can at least take some consolation in the fact that he’s not an ordinary lunatic because he’s nameless.”  
  
Draco blinked at him. Harry was hungry even for the way his blond eyelashes rose and fell, sheltering and then showing his eyes. “And how did he manage that?”  
  
“The magic he worked.” Harry looked back at the Auror case notes on the subject, feeling quiet awe brush him like a moth’s wing. “He passed the wards because he convinced them he was you. It wasn’t your blood he carried in his veins, but the stamp of your personality and spirit he carried in his soul. And to go that far, he had to whittle  _himself_  away. We don’t stand any chance of knowing who he was. The magical theory experts in the Auror Department think that if we ever ran into his original name, we wouldn’t recognize it. Magic and desire do strange things.”  
  
Draco was silent. Then he shook his head and said, “He’s still out there, somewhere. Will the Aurors assign me a guard?”  
  
Harry hesitated. Then he took a deep breath. “They thought I would do, if you’ll consent to me.”  
  
Draco let his eyelashes rise very high this time. “What? I—I don’t mind—“ And there was a scramble and tangle of emotions behind his voice that told Harry, in incoherent terms, just how very far from minding he was. “But why would your supervisors think you were competent enough to take the case? They sent you away in the first place for sleeping with me.”  
  
“Not only for that,” Harry said. “And—I explained things to Kingsley.”  
  
 _It hadn’t been pleasant, sitting down before the Head Auror and telling him that he had found himself so tied to Draco’s fate that opposing it was impossible. Harry had rambled on about love and the way he’d rescued Draco and the way he’d felt when he thought the imposter would yet tear Draco apart whilst Kingsley gazed past him at the far wall, his face old in a way that made Harry feel guilty.  
  
At last he said, “I understand, Auror. And yes, you’ll stay on the case. You’re the best protection for him at the moment, since you’re fighting for love, and it’s the best way to avoid the scandal that Auror Weasley’s failure to provide guards for Malfoy would signify to the public.”  
  
He turned back and held up a hand just as Harry began to babble his thanks. “If something goes wrong this time,” he said, “you won’t be removed from the case, because there won’t be a reason for you to be in the Department at all.”  
  
Harry had bowed his head and kept it still for long moments, to ensure Kingsley that he understood the seriousness of the situation. His infatuation with Draco could cost him his job. But he didn’t—couldn’t—regret the cost, because of the prize, and the frustration of knowing that shimmered behind Kingsley’s eyes._  
  
“Good,” Draco said, and Harry started when he realized that Draco had come closer and slipped a hand behind his neck. Usually, Draco voluntarily touching him was such an event that he didn’t miss any nuance of it. “Then we can do a variety of things that would be hard to do if I had to visit you in your flat every day. Or, worse, the Ministry.”  
  
Harry smiled and kissed Draco gently, sucking at his lip. “You wouldn’t want to shag in the Ministry,” he said, pulling away again. “They’ve thought of ways to suck privacy out of every tiny corner.”  
  
“ _Suck_ , hmmm?” Draco’s eyes filled with delight. “I think that’s an invitation, Auror Potter.”  
  
Harry flowed down Draco’s body, kissing him and stripping the cloth from his body with wandless magic as he went. They had wanked and sucked each other off in the last few days, without hesitation. Harry found a continual violent delight in touching Draco, rather like dashing into the sea and embracing a wave that was almost too much for him to handle.  
  
But neither of them had suggested shagging again. The action held too many regrets and too many silences—too many apologies that Draco hadn’t yet made and which Harry wasn’t sure he could have accepted were they made.  
  
They’d get there eventually, Harry reassured himself as he opened Draco’s trousers and then maneuvered his pants gently down his legs. They had more time than he had ever thought they would when he saw the imposter almost choke Draco to death at that party.  
  
And then the sight of Draco’s hard cock filled his vision, and the taste filled his mouth, and he had better things to think about.  
  
*  
  
Draco snapped his eyes open in the darkness. He knew that someone had brushed past his forehead, and he had the unshakable conviction that it was his mother.  
  
 _Why not a moth? Why not the twitch of a ward_? he asked himself, as he propped his body up on an elbow and rubbed sleep away from his mouth.  _You have enough reason to worry about the wards, with the imposter after you._  
  
But he had sensed things like this before, though the memories were hardly more substantial than dreams, and he wasn’t surprised to see a faint glow hovering around the portrait frame mostly hidden by a tapestry on the wall. Draco wiped his mouth again, and then told himself not to be weak. He stood and walked over to the frame.  
  
When he drew back the tapestry, his mother sat in the green velvet chair that the artist had made part of the painting, staring at him.  
  
Draco cleared his throat. He was always unaccountably embarrassed when he talked to his mother, which he never understood. After all, he had known her all his life before she—passed. There was no reason that he had to feel isolated from her. And he had shared a few late-night conversations with her that had ended up changing his life.  
  
“Draco,” Narcissa said. “Am I to understand that you have chosen Harry Potter?”  
  
Draco looked over his shoulder towards the bed, but Harry didn’t stir, except to mumble and press his face into the warm indentation Draco had left. So he faced his mother again and nodded, not meeting her eyes.  
  
“Why?” Narcissa asked. “I have seen you with others who would have made superior partners.”  
  
Draco relaxed. When his mother entered this question-and-answer game that was also a cat-and-mouse one, he knew how to reply. She had always been closer to him simply because she loved him more than Lucius, but it was also true that Draco grasped her means of showing that love better. She wanted him to succeed and survive, whereas Lucius had sometimes acted as if his survival would be enough. Certainly, by allying with the Dark Lord, he had done much to sabotage Draco’s future.  
  
“My feeling for those people was not superior,” Draco replied. “For him, it is.”  
  
“And you would choose a partner based on your feelings?” Narcissa tilted her head, her eyes glittering like moonflowers at midnight. “Not on what he can bring to your family, your life, or your vaults?”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. “I don’t want a marriage like yours and Lucius’s.”  
  
Narcissa’s face became so proud and pure and remote that, for a moment, Draco almost decided he  _didn’t_  know her. “What has your father been telling you?”  
  
“I have eyes,” Draco said shortly. He had never spoken about this with his mother’s portrait, but then, she had never demanded that he justify his choice of lovers, either. He wondered how far her reach really extended. Had she realized she was dead and should concern herself with things other than her son? “He moped after you died, for years, and now recently he goes around with his face in this look of frozen contemplation. He’s angry at you, now, finally, for dying the way you did. And he has a right to be. It was a stupid way to die.”  
  
Narcissa stirred, a ripple running the length of her robes. “I was trying to protect you.”  
  
“I know you were.” Draco bit his lips and brew his breath hard through them, trying to chase away the tension. “But the problem, Mother, is that you refused to rely on anyone’s help to do it.” He threw a glance back at Harry and thought, again, of the impossibility of parting with him. So far, he had thought of that mainly in terms of a weakness, the obsession he couldn’t grow past or get over or transform. But that wasn’t true, was it? The emotions had transformed already, from his blank self-absorption into the stronger and cleaner passion that had made him attack the imposter for Harry’s sake. “You can call that the lesson I’ve learned and the decision I’ve made, if you like. I’ve chosen a partner who can help me.”  
  
“Draco.” Narcissa breathed a sigh he thought would have felt like moonlight if it had actually touched his face. “There are two problems with that. The first is the fragility of other people. What happens if he dies and leaves you alone? If he tires of you? If he fails you?”  
  
“I don’t fear the second happening,” Draco said. “We’ve enthralled each other.” He smiled, and wondered absently what the smile would look like in a mirror. “Thrall is an old word for slave. I never realized how appropriate that was.”  
  
“If he leaves you alone?”  
  
“I know that could come,” said Draco. “I think I would survive it better than Father survived your death. At least I would know my partner had loved me.”  
  
Narcissa chose not to let that make any impact on her expression. “And if he fails you?”  
  
“I’ll fail him, too,” Draco said. “I expect failure. I’m teaching myself to live with it. I think I’ll be happier when I do.”  
  
“The second problem,” Narcissa said, “is that you have not told Potter everything. He thinks he understands the full range of your obsession, and I have heard him confessing his to you. But you have left out part of the truth.”  
  
Draco frowned. “What?”  
  
In the portrait frame beside Narcissa, Harry appeared. Draco at once recognized the one he had kept imprisoned in the portrait in the relics room from the bitterness around his mouth and the shadows in his eyes. He tossed his head back, gave Draco a bitter wink, and mouthed something insulting before he vanished behind the green velvet chair.  
  
“I didn’t know he could leave his own picture,” said Draco numbly. He shifted. His fingers were tingling as if he’d sat on them.  
  
“We have conversed for some time,” said Narcissa. “And to both Potter and yourself, you owe the duty of making sure you can survive your darkest part.”  
  
She vanished out of the frame with a single stride. Draco stood regarding it for a long time before he let the tapestry fall, and then he went back to bed for several hours of comfortless waking, whilst Harry snored in his ear.  
  
*  
  
Lucius looked at the endless rows of diaries gathered on the shelves.   
  
 _Not endless_ , whispered the pedantic, truth-telling voice in the back of his head. Lucius made it a habit to tell  _himself_  as much of the truth as possible. Lying to other people was a necessity of life, but he had seen too many Death Eaters who lied to themselves and lost their grip on reality in the process.  _You know that she kept them for the twenty years she was married to you, and she generally filled one every two months._  
  
But for some months she had written more, and each diary was filled with pages that he had, reverently, not counted—as if refusing to count them could somehow make Narcissa’s life, contained within them, last forever.  
  
Lucius’s shoulder muscles bunched, then relaxed.  
  
 _She wrote them. And what good did it do? She showed them to no one else. She didn’t act on the revelations that she put in them. Either she was recording actions she had already taken, or actions she had already decided on, or bitter truths that she hugged to herself, glad that other people didn’t know them. She never once tried to show me that she didn’t love me, or felt my love inadequate. She never once hinted that she thought I couldn’t protect Draco. She expected me to know it._  
  
She was self-absorbed, curled into herself like a snail into its shell, writing for herself only. I thought these diaries were addressed to me, or maybe to Draco, the legacy she left of herself, my chance to understand her.   
  
I only understand her mirror by understanding them. And I need to leave this room before my love for my wife is drained completely.  
  
Lucius stepped out of the library. He had considered, for a wild moment after his anger freed him from his obsession with his wife, burning the diaries. It would be a fitting fate for those shiny, reflective words that in the end conveyed nothing but the endless, suffocating labyrinths of Narcissa’s soul.  
  
But in the end he could not bring himself to do it. Draco was more like Narcissa—was the center of her life. Maybe he would find something of value in them.  
  
Instead, Lucius locked the library’s door, gently, and then walked away, leaving the words to whisper in the dark to themselves, the only audience they were truly interested in.


	32. No Other Medicine But Only Hope

Harry woke to find Draco watching him with shadowed eyes.  
  
That might be for any number of reasons, Harry thought, staring calmly back at Draco in the moment before he showed he was awake. It could be because Draco wanted to suggest having full-on sex but didn’t know how to, given what he had done to Harry last time they did. He might wonder if Harry was ever going to forgive him for going to the papers, and not know how to ask that as well. One of his hands crept out as if he would touch Harry’s thigh and then halted; was he afraid of looking weak by clutching Harry too close as they slept?  
  
Harry knew only one thing for certain. He wouldn’t find out by lying here.  
  
He yawned, letting the motion of his jaws squeeze his eyes shut, and stretched his arms above his head. When he looked again, Draco’s face was perfectly normal. Harry still had trouble seeing what was behind the mask when Draco was  _concentrating_  on keeping him out, but he noticed the evidence of edges and lines, which was more than he’d ever done before. In this case, he could see the tightness around Draco’s eyes and hear the slight grinding noise that meant he was working his teeth against one another.  
  
“Harry,” he said, and paused.  
  
Pleased that he was going to tell the truth for once without Harry’s having to drag it out of him, Harry smiled and looked directly at him. “Good morning,” he said. “Yes?”  
  
Draco stopped grinding his teeth, but from the way his eyes dipped and flashed away, that was because he was afraid Harry would hear it. “Nothing,” he said. “Except that I have a question to ask you, and I want you to answer honestly.”  
  
Harry felt a flash of irritation. Yes, his physical relationship with Draco was much better than it had been, and if Harry hadn’t completely forgiven him for going to the papers, that was news to him. But life with Draco was not perfect. He insisted that Harry carry far more of the emotional freight when they interacted. Perhaps he felt that his multiple confessions in one day had been enough, but Harry did wish they would move towards sharing that burden—since Draco thought of it as one—more equally.  
  
Since it was unlikely to happen at the moment, he said, “All right,” and laid his head back against the pillow, waiting. Draco’s arm had extended behind him to provide a comfortable resting place, but he thought he’d avoid that at the moment. And Draco was unlikely to think he was avoiding it on purpose, because he didn’t have that high an opinion of Harry’s subtlety.  
  
 _Sometimes I think Hermione’s right, and we’re going to tear each other apart._  
  
“What was the most extreme action you took when you were stalking me?” Draco asked. His eyes were wide and dark.   
  
Harry blinked.  _Well, all right, then_. He had expected Draco to ask how he felt about having his hands bound again, since, from the way Draco liked to hold his wrists against the bed, it was one of Harry’s kinks he shared. But Harry was just as glad to answer a question he had much simpler feelings on.  
  
“I stood outside your office for hours each day,” he said. “I spied on your meetings with clients, and I spied on you in private, so I could study the different ways you acted. And I saved—well, lots of newspaper clippings of you.” He shrugged. “I thought at the time that it was the closest I’d ever come to you.”  
  
“Newspaper clippings,” said Draco, and rolled over to stare at the ceiling. “ _Newspaper clippings_ ,” he repeated loudly, as though he were talking to someone else. Harry looked around the room, but didn’t see Lucius, or Snape, or even a house-elf.  
  
He did hear what sounded like a bitter snort, which made him wonder if Snape possessed an Invisibility Cloak. But even if he did, Harry couldn’t see him enjoying any late-night spying he did on them. Probably, he had told Draco that Harry wasn’t good for him because of his obsession, and Draco was trying to make the point that newspaper clippings were not as bad as they could have been.  
  
Draco rolled back to him and extended his hand to Harry, his face solemn but his eyes no longer as shadowed. “Come to breakfast?”  
  
“Of course.” Harry smiled at him, glad that his answer had contented Draco for whatever reason. He  _liked_  being able to please and help Draco. “Just let me shower first.”   
  
*  
  
 _Maybe I don’t have to tell him._  
  
Draco held on to that hope even as he watched Harry luxuriating in the breakfast that the house-elves had made for them. It wasn’t as good as the food at Hogwarts, or even at some of the top-level restaurants in Diagon Alley; the house-elves had a tendency to be sloppy in recent years, with Lucius so isolated and Draco gone from the house much of the time on business for his clients and Severus not caring what he ate. Draco made a mental note to remedy that. This would be a hell of a time for Harry to leave him because the food was poor, of all things.  
  
 _He collected newspaper clippings of me. He was obsessed with my appearance and with stories about me, the same way I was about him. What I did was worse, but not_  that  _much worse. There’s really no reason that Mother should want me to tell him. And anyway, she’s not even my mother, but only a portrait reflection of her. Everyone knows that portraits don’t understand living people that well._  
  
Harry caught his eye and smiled at him. Draco smiled and toasted him with his glass of strawberry juice. At least the house-elves had remembered that he enjoyed more juices than simply orange and pumpkin.  
  
“What will you do today?” Harry asked, around a mouthful of toast slathered with butter. Draco avoided grimacing at his bad manners by studying his own plate intently for a moment. He still had a few morsels of bacon left. He would have to remember to take them by the Owlery.   
  
“I’ve neglected the Keller house long enough,” Draco said. “I’ll travel to the site and set up the illusion again, then look at it in different lights and decide what needs to be changed.” He glanced up, about to ask whether Harry would prefer to lunch at the site or return to the Manor, and was just in time to catch a strange grimace on Harry’s face. He paused. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Harry swallowed and shook his head. “Nothing. I’ll come with you, of course. The imposter would probably take the chance to attack you the minute you get outside the wards.”  
  
“Or at any time.” Draco reached across the table and laid a hand on his arm. “Remember, the wards didn’t stop him before.”  
  
“No.” For a moment, Harry’s eyes took on a flat, glazed sheen, as if he were seeing the moment when the imposter had snatched Draco from his bed. Though Draco hadn’t described it in any detail, Harry had told Draco he didn’t need a description. Then he snapped out of the mood and repeated, “Of course I’ll come with you.”  
  
Draco sat back in his chair, eyeing Harry curiously. At times, he doubted he would ever actually understand Harry; there seemed to be a new, unknown factor to cope with every time he was confident that he grasped the essentials.  
  
Before he could ask another question to try and gently shake the answer loose, a cool voice spoke from the doorway. “Draco. A moment of your time.”  
  
Draco stared in shock. Lucius stood there, and there was a life and glittering light in his eyes that Draco had never seen since—well, at least since Narcissa was alive. Draco darted a glance at Harry, but he was blinking, apparently as surprised at the change as Draco was.  
  
Draco wasn’t about to give away too much surprise. That would be to show weakness in front of a potential enemy. He rose to his feet, bowed a bit, said, “Of course, Father,” and moved after Lucius into the anteroom opposite to the dining room.  
  
The worried gaze he could feel Harry fixing on his back warmed him all through. Yes, it was worth committing any crime to hang on to Harry, and he knew he would lose him in moments if he told him the truth about the relics room.  
  
*  
  
“Potter.”  
  
Harry glanced up, and stared. Snape stood behind him with his arms folded and frown lines so tight around his eyes that Harry automatically looked at the table, scanning for the remains of the potion he had ruined, before he remembered that he didn’t need to worry about ridiculous punishments from Snape ever again.  
  
He did his best to assume a cool expression. Then he realized, from his own thoughts as much as the scornful arch of Snape’s eyebrow, that he would never do it well enough to rival someone like Snape, so he settled for a harsh glare instead. “Exactly what do you want?” he snarled.  
  
“To know what you intend to do with Draco.” Snape examined the nails on his right hand. Looking for traces of blood, probably, Harry thought, so he would know what the new stains looked like when he tried to pluck out Harry’s eyes.  
  
“Guard him until the imposter is captured,” Harry said firmly. “Then go back to my own flat, but still visit him as often as I can. Gradually work out the problems that still lie between us. Live happily ever after.”  
  
“A very Gryffindor plan.” Snape studied him the way he might a mouse that had been delivered still squirming.  
  
“I do wish you’d give over the entire business about Gryffindors and Slytherins,” Harry muttered, turning back to his breakfast. He still had eggs he hadn’t yet enjoyed, and he saw no reason to let Snape ruin his pleasure in them. Snape’s presence wasn’t as important as they were. “Perfectly ridiculous, you know. We’re not in Hogwarts anymore.”  
  
“It still guides our lives,” Snape replied. “It is still a division between two kinds of people that the simplest may understand.” His voice prickled with something Harry might have called laughter, had he considered that Snape cold laugh.  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Harry said, and yawned, and ate his eggs. Snape stood there staring at his back. Harry let him. He half-wondered when Snape would get bored and go back to his foul smells and gelatinous explosions.  
  
A hand slapped down on the table next to him, making him choke. As he hastily took up his cup of tea and swallowed some to ease the bruised feeling in his throat, he saw that Snape’s hand was actually impeccable. Of course, mixing traces of old potions ingredients into new ones probably wasn’t the best idea. Harry felt proud of himself for remembering that salient tidbit from long-ago lessons.  
  
“Your insouciance is unappreciated, Potter.” Snape’s voice had descended into a hiss. “I have spent much time training Draco and making him into the kind of student my labors require. I will not see that undone by your actions.”  
  
Harry snorted. “I have no intention of keeping him from brewing. If he’d ever rather spend the night in the lab than having passionate sex with me, he only has to say so.”  
  
As he had hoped would happen, Snape looked faintly green, but he didn’t walk away.  _Damn_. Harry sipped his tea again and kept his expression as politely neutral as he might.  _I don’t even know what he wants. If this is the speech where he tells me he’ll kill me if I hurt Draco, he could have made some threat about chopping me up into ingredients that would give me nightmares for a week._  
  
“His obsession with you has always been his great weakness,” Snape said abruptly. “It leads to complacency with his faults and a refusal to confront those aspects of himself that most need healing and tending.”  
  
Harry arched an eyebrow as best he could. “Obviously, I don’t agree.”  
  
Snape went on speaking as if he hadn’t heard what Harry said. “He needed to learn to know himself. And now that he has a chance, you would deprive him of it.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Why would my presence keep him from knowing himself?”  
  
Snape shook his head and leaned nearer, to the point that Harry wanted to retreat before the hook of his nose. He sat in his chair, however, and tried to look bored, because he had given up on showing Snape that he was afraid.   
  
“You are a true idiot,” Snape whispered. “He has a chance to know himself better now that you have become part of his life. If you are wise, you will press that chance, and force him to face his faults. Instead, you encourage and coddle him. You treat him too gently. You must push him past that, or those flaws will drive you away in the end, and I will be left to console a student who thinks only of winning you back, and not of brewing.”  
  
Harry blinked again. Buried in there somewhere was a compliment, something he would never have believed of Snape. He licked his lips and sat up a little straighter. “I don’t plan on being driven away.”  
  
“It will be something you cannot control.” Snape’s eyes half-lidded for a moment, as if he were thinking of something dark, disgusting, and vulgar, though Harry had no idea what it could be. “You cannot imagine how you would react to—“  
  
And then he shook his head, and turned away, and swept out of the room, leaving Harry to stare after him in wonder.  
  
*  
  
Lucius turned around in the anteroom and surveyed his son carefully. He had planned on what he would say, but he had not reckoned with the stubborn, calm face that Draco showed him. He seemed prepared to listen to exactly as many words as were required to make his father think he had learned his lesson, whilst in reality learning nothing at all.  
  
Lucius wanted to shake his head in wonder. Had he let his son slip so far out of the discipline of thought and action that ensured the survival of their family? But of course he had, and he had encouraged Draco’s disrespect himself. The world had ceased to matter to him after Narcissa’s death, and when he did take notice of his son, it was only because he had wanted to prove that he could take up Narcissa’s charge and love Draco as she would have done.   
  
He knew now that there was little he could have done that was more stupid. Draco didn’t have the self-control or the maturity to be on his own. Lucius should have paid more attention to him after the demise of the Dark Lord, and if he had to vanish into the library and the sustained contemplation of Narcissa’s empty portrait frame, it was his duty to ensure that his son could support himself.  
  
He could not. His obsession with Potter was the greatest sign of that, but not the only one.  
  
“I will grant you one chance,” Lucius said.  
  
Draco blinked, and drew himself up. Lucius could see some of his own grace and confidence in that gesture, but he knew they were feigned. When Lucius stood on his own to face some challenge, he had resources to base his pride on. Draco had nothing more than a hollow core of uncertainty revolving around his dependence on Potter and his architectural talent. Both were great gifts—or weaknesses—but Draco could not conquer every obstacle life flung at him by relying on them. He would have to vary his interests and diversify his strengths.   
  
Lucius had understood the same thing instinctively at seventeen, never mind twenty-seven. Of course, the early death of his father had encouraged him in that; Lucius had become the Malfoy patriarch in truth when he was young. Draco had become accustomed to acting as such whilst, in reality, fulfilling none of the responsibilities and thinking of duty as an empty word.   
  
“One chance to do what?” Draco asked.  
  
Lucius eyed his son with grim resignation.  _He_  had stood under the lash of longer silences than that and made his enemy speak first. Draco had no patience. That would go on the long list of flaws to be remedied.  
  
In the end, before death came to claim him as it always did, he would see his son strong and well-made, shining, ready to take on the fury of a world that had little use for Malfoys or for Death Eaters. Lucius intended to raise Draco to that state, to teach him, not to bully him. But at moments like this, as he looked back on Draco’s extended, wasted youth, it was difficult not to want to.  
  
“I will give you one chance to tell Potter the truth about yourself,” he said. “How your obsession weakened you, what it really means—the ugly side of it as well as the beautiful. He must know how great a fool of yourself you made over him during the last few years.”  
  
Draco laughed. “I already have done that,” he said. “I figured out that I even fought the war for him, and thought he was fighting it for me, rather than to kill Voldemort.”   
  
Lucius told himself not to flinch at the name. Of course his son could say it. He did not understand the terror of it the way Lucius did.  
  
He subdued his impatience as well. “And does he know the truth about your room beneath the Manor?” he asked softly. “Does he know that you buried the smallest things there, the most trivial treasures that had once touched his skin or his lips or his hand? I believe he might be very interested to know it.”  
  
Shock melted across Draco’s face, and for a moment he stood still. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“You’re only surprised that I discovered it, rather.” Lucius advanced on him with slow steps, noting the place his foot touched on the floor when Draco backed up.  _Much further away than I would have flinched from_ , he thought with disapproval. “Draco. I am still in tune with the Manor’s wards, still their primary master. I have resumed my place and my care of them as of this morning. I know the changes you made.”  
  
Draco growled in his throat and looked, for a moment, desperate and furious and trapped. Lucius approved. This was the first moment Draco seemed to have realized what kind of obstacle he was up against, rather than carelessly trying to brush it aside. His hands clenched into fists and then opened.  
  
“I will tell him in my own time, when I think he can understand,” Draco said temperately. “And why do you imagine that it’s necessary?”  
  
“Because it is necessary to your happiness that he stay,” Lucius said. “And if he discovered it later—as he would—he will not. And I would rather not have my peace disrupted by the constant nagging worry that he may leave and that you may become incompetent as you were when your obsession was unfulfilled.”  
  
Draco turned away from him, a flush mantling his cheeks and his ears and the back of his neck. Lucius watched him in silence, as strong and as pitiless as he always should have been, as was necessary to urge his son towards adulthood. He had not felt this way in almost ten years.  
  
“Very well,” Draco said. “Did you have any wish to insult me further?”  
  
Lucius found himself smiling with genuine amusement. “You have become unlearned in insults, if you think that was one,” he murmured. “Go.”  
  
Draco snapped him a glance of resentment before he slid away. Lucius shook his head and prepared to retire to his rooms. He needed to look over the accounts of the Manor with great care, and then he needed to discipline the house-elves, who had given him burned toast this morning. Weak house-elves were no more acceptable than a weak son.  
  
*  
  
Harry looked up as Draco came back through the doors into the dining room. He leaped to his feet. Draco was pale and swaying as if he would collapse to the floor at any moment. Harry hastened around the table, took him into his arms, and used his wandless magic to cast a few surreptitious spells looking for the Dark Arts. If Lucius had used those on Draco, he would pay, whether he was Draco’s father and Harry’s host or not.   
  
But Draco was clean, and he leaned against Harry with a desperate sob that Harry didn’t think any mere Dark spell could wring out of him. Bewildered, Harry smoothed a comforting hand up his spine and murmured nonsense words. Draco’s grip firmed on him, and he murmured something querulous. Harry made more meaningless hushing sounds.  
  
“Do you need to leave?” he asked, when he thought that he could trust himself to speak. “You said that you wanted to go to the cliffs and look at the illusion of the Keller house again.” He did not want to go there, because that was one of the last places he had been with Draco before Draco took him to the land of pure magic and betrayed him, but he also knew that it made little difference. He needed to do what was best for Draco. At the moment, Draco didn’t look strong enough to make the suggestion on his own.  
  
“There’s somewhere else we have to go first.” Draco’s fingers dug desperately into Harry’s arms and back. Harry restrained a yelp of pain and nodded.  
  
“All right. Where?”  
  
Draco shuddered and drew his head up. He was shaking as if he had plunged into a bath of ice water, but his face was set with determination, and Harry didn’t think he had ever seen Draco look finer.  
  
“A room,” Draco said. “One I created, and one that you need to see in order to understand my obsession with you.” He smiled painfully. “My Chamber of Secrets, if you will.”  
  
Harry didn’t know why the name of a place where he had triumphed over Voldemort—or part of Voldemort—should make his heart begin to beat as if it were a funeral drum.  
  
But Draco wanted to go there, so they would go there. He managed a smile and swept his arm ahead of him. “Lead on.”


	33. Dearer Than Liberty

Draco halted in front of the door to his room and closed his eyes. His heart was beating so loudly that he thought he wouldn’t have heard Harry if Harry had spoken just then. His mouth was dry and bitter, and sweeping his tongue across his lips didn’t help.  
  
He opened his eyes and stared unseeing at the door for long moments. The plate of cobalt was still the same when his gaze focused, and so was the dragon’s head in the center, surrounded by a braid of gold. Now, he could hear Harry stirring beside him. To avoid looking at the door for a moment, Draco turned around and looked at him. Harry was squinting as if he had tried to stare into strong sunlight.  
  
“What’s the matter?” Draco asked, watching the shadows darting across his face in fascination.  
  
“It  _is_  like the Chamber of Secrets,” Harry whispered. “Both of them guarded by serpents. Both of them with something dark inside.” He looked at Draco, as if against his will; his left eye lingered on the door for long moments after his right had transferred its gaze. “There is something dark in there, isn’t there, Draco?”  
  
Draco tried to speak, but his dry mouth prevented him. He settled for taking Harry’s hands, murmuring into his ear, “Believe nothing you see or hear,” and stepping forwards.  
  
His illusory defenses surrounded him at once. The ground trembled and tried to close over him like quicksand. The voices danced on the edge of his hearing and laughed and lied. The heat of flames tried to burn his eyes out of his head, tried to turn his lips to ash, tried to turn his fingernails to drifting black fragments.  
  
Harry uttered one huge gasp, a sobbing breath like someone about to drown in mud. Then they were through, and Draco opened his eyes.  
  
Once again, he could not bear to look at Harry. Once again, he stood gazing forwards and awaiting Harry’s reaction, though this time fear had cramped his spine and the muscles of his belly until he thought he would vomit.  
  
*  
  
For some reason, Harry noticed the luxurious furniture and wall coverings in a blaze of gold and gems and glory first, and then dismissed them. He should have stared the way he had stared at the furnishings of the Manor when he was new to it, but he couldn’t. Perhaps he knew instinctively that riches were not what Draco had brought him here to see. Draco would not be nervous about displaying treasures to him.   
  
No, the glass cases caught his gaze, and held them.  
  
Harry put a hand to his mouth. He hardly knew what he was trying to hold back. Words? Bile? Blame?   
  
He moved slowly towards the cases, and, somewhere along the way, dropped Draco’s hand. He stooped, and stared at his own face flickering across the photographs that the  _Daily Prophet_  had published and other people had taken of him, small images of himself riding brooms, making speeches, laughing, tossing his head back, leaning a shoulder against a wall as he gave some brisk post-arrest discussion of a criminal’s finer techniques. Every Harry, he soon noticed, kept his eyes carefully away from the torn edges of the pictures, as if he could remain unconscious of his imprisonment if he did so.  
  
He turned his head slowly, wondering what could come next, what could be worse than the photographs preserved under glass as if they were precious things instead of the detritus of a wizarding society that had made him its one true celebrity. And he discovered that worse was the detritus of his own daily life. Crumpled invitations, crumbs of bread and cheese, memos in his handwriting, cups which enchantments must have preserved with the imprint of his lips on the side, dirtied bars of soap, twists of cloth he didn’t even remember but which he must have used at some point to dry his hands or carry food on…  
  
Or, he realized as he saw the stains of blood on one of them, bandage wounds.  
  
He lifted his head and moved to another case, and looked at more of the same. His movements were slow and deliberate, and he thought Draco, watching him, must assume Harry was doing that to torment him.  
  
He wasn’t. He hadn’t yet let the reality of the situation break over him like a cloudburst, because, when he did, he thought he would lose something precious.  
  
He looked up at last, to the platform of jade that stood in the center of the room, raised above the other objects, to the glittering portrait frame that brooded there, and the scene of the Quidditch pitch that it enclosed, and the figure of himself that stood in the center of it with arms folded.  
  
There was horror and weariness in his pictured self’s eyes to rival the horror and weariness that would come from spending a lifetime among the Death Eaters.  
  
Harry swayed, and put out a hand. He found a shoulder beneath his fingers, a hand clasping his—Draco, ready to lend support.  
  
Harry, without even thinking, tore his arm loose and spun about. “Don’t touch me,” he whispered, his tongue scraping like one of the dry, tattered parchments Draco had preserved against his teeth. “Oh, don’t touch me.”  
  
*  
  
Draco felt as though the best thing of his life had turned to tears and salt and melted through his fingers.   
  
He stepped back from Harry and folded his hands, staring at the floor. The dryness had invaded his eyes. He knew he should weep for the ending of the love he had hoped for, but there was no question of that. He shivered again and again, and didn’t dare to lift his head and look at Harry, in fear of what he would see there.  
  
But of course he had to look up again, because he had pictured the meeting between the real Harry and his portrait—in other contexts—for too long not to observe it.  
  
Harry had moved forwards and rested his hands on the jade platform that held the frame, staring up at his other self with desperate pity. That other self was examining him with a rapt expression that had driven out its own fear, which Draco had seen on its face from the day that the enchanted portrait awakened.  
  
“How long have you been here?” Harry asked, the words rising and then falling on a slight breath Draco knew he would never have heard if he hadn’t been concentrating intently on doing so.  
  
The portrait opened his mouth, but the Silencing Charms Draco had embedded in the frame so long ago kept him from saying anything. He twitched his cloak around his shoulder and glared pointedly past Harry at Draco.  
  
Harry didn’t even turn around to look at him; that was the most heartbreaking thing, Draco thought later, when he could think properly. He simply drew his wand and tapped it against the frame, muttering a few countercharms. The portrait drew a deep breath and lifted his hand, laying it against the surface of the painting like someone stroking a pane of glass. Harry at once lifted his hand in response, but his fingers hovered a few inches above the streaks of paint; perhaps he remembered that he couldn’t touch his other self no matter what happened.  
  
“He’s kept me here for years,” the portrait Harry said, softly but fervently. “He had spells on the frame so I couldn’t get out and couldn’t speak. The portrait of his mother dissipated those spells recently, or I wouldn’t have been able to move around at all.” He trembled and shut his eyes. Then he said, “I think he changed when it came to the real thing, but, Harry—are you  _sure_  you can be happy with him?”  
  
“I’m  _not_  sure,” Harry said, his voice loud and rough and broken.  
  
Draco licked his lips and then spoke, because not even the dryness of his mouth could block the aching of his heart at that point. “Harry. Think of the way we’ve rescued each other and spoken to each other in the past few days—“  
  
“Think of the way he abused me,” said the portrait Harry, tossing his hair out of his eyes and revealing the lightning bolt scar. Draco remembered how careful he had been to insist on that particular detail making its way into the painting. Harry wouldn’t really have been Harry without that scar, and Draco had had to have a realistic image to look at in lieu of the real thing. “For years. Can anyone change that fact? I don’t think so.”  
  
“I can,” Draco said, “now that I have the real thing.”  
  
“Listen to you,” Harry said, whipping around to face him. His arms were folded, but Draco thought the movement was defensive as much as it was angry. His wand scraped along the inside of his arm, pointed towards his body, and his shoulders hunched as if he were gifted with wings. “ _Have_. As if I were a bloody object!” His hair stood on end with the wandless magic whipping around him, a transition so sudden that Draco blinked in startlement.  
  
“It’s only an expression,” Draco said. He could feel anger threatening to break through his calm, and he willed it away. He thought getting angry now would only provide the portrait Harry with a chance to point out to the real Harry how dangerously unstable he was. “Harry, I love you. It’s true that I didn’t  _only_  love you for a long time, I wanted to possess you, too, but you felt the same way towards me. Why is this so different? We’ve both cleared the rubbish out of our emotions, we can be honest with one another—“  
  
“I never felt anything like this.” Harry shuddered, his shoulders rolling this time as if he stood on a ship. “Nothing like this.”  
  
“But it was similar,” Draco argued, stepping towards him. He felt as if he had to reach out and snare him with his hands, as if Harry would vanish at any moment—despite Draco knowing that he had spells to prevent anyone else from Apparating in on the room—and at the same time, he didn’t quite dare to touch him. “Harry, please. I love you. The real you, not the person I thought you were. That person was the one I collected these clippings because of, that person was the one I fought the war for. But you’re the person I attacked the imposter for—“  
  
“Convenient, then,” said a replica of his own voice from the other side of the room, “that I can destroy you both at once.”  
  
Draco turned, but not fast enough.  
  
A purple mist encircled him, and then a cold sensation struck to the center of his being—rather the way his nightmares had included the Dementor’s Kiss happening, sometimes, when he dared to dream about such things. And then he was falling, and there was no bottom under his feet at all.  
  
*  
  
Harry saw the imposter standing with his wand triumphantly raised, and then the purple mist turned away from punishing Draco and surged towards him. Draco lay motionless on the floor, his mouth open and his eyes blank. Harry thought he saw something, a whirling scum of stars, shine through the purple smoke. Then it vanished.  
  
Harry felt an immense anger, sparking red-black, fill him. He might have decided not to love Draco anymore and leave him alone to wallow amongst the manky remains of his obsession—but  _he_  was the one who should make that decision, and not this obsessed creature with the mad genius for spells in front of him. Harry flung his magic towards the imposter, partially through his wand and partially through the air.  
  
The storm ripped into the imposter and tossed him off his feet. He rolled and smashed into one of the glass cases, which shattered at once so neatly that Harry suspected a Reparo had been used on it recently. But he was back on his feet in a moment, and a blue smoke rose from his wand and sailed on enormous bat-wings towards Harry, whilst the purple smoke that had stolen the essence from Draco moved up behind him.  
  
Harry snarled. He didn’t care. He didn’t  _care_. Draco was lying on the floor, bereft of his soul or something else important, and the imposter was smiling as if he didn’t care that he had just done something like that, and Harry’s stomach was churning with the thought of what Draco’s obsession must have meant—it was much worse than the people who followed him around asking him for autographs—and his head hurt and his magic rang and he had lost the love he had thought he had found and he wasn’t going to  _take_  this.  
  
He cast a spell that Hermione had designed and then promptly forbidden him to use. The air in front of him darkened and solidified and became a large, bird-winged creature with a body like a dragon’s and a head like a donkey’s. It opened its mouth and sucked at the air, and the blue smoke compressed itself and hurried into the tunnel its lips formed.  
  
That left the purple smoke. Harry turned towards it and balanced his wand on his palm, panting lightly.  
  
“Give up,” hissed the imposter. “Just  _give up_. You’ve found out that he never cared for you in the way you thought he did; why would you want to stay with him?”  
  
But Harry heard the crackling edge of desperation in the man’s voice, and had to keep from smiling triumphantly. His eyes stayed locked on the purple smoke. He moved backwards a step, as if frightened, and the smoke surged in.  
  
Then Harry sprang to meet it, and flung his magic in another uncoordinated fashion. He was already shaking with the exhaustion that always followed any lengthy use of wandless magic, but his anger was so great that he didn’t care. And besides, he knew exactly what he wanted to happen, when the condition that usually attended any use of wandless magic was desire unshaped by will.  
  
 _And now I’m starting to sound like Hermione. Maybe it’s appropriate when dealing with a genius madman._  
  
The magic surrounded the purple smoke in a shining, snapping net, the way that Harry thought a fishing net might look if it was alive and aware and able to take an active part in capturing its prey. It writhed and flung hooks and limbs in all directions, and the purple smoke screamed. It shredded, and the silver, shining thing Harry had briefly glimpsed before, the thing that belonged to Draco, flew out and into the open air.  
  
The net turned to pursue that, and the imposter pointed his wand.  
  
Harry jumped up and caught it the same way he would have caught the Snitch in a Quidditch game.  
  
The silver thing hissed and coiled around his hands, as wonderfully alive as the snakes that Harry had once worked with when the Aurors had interrupted an illegal shipment of cobra-Runepsoor hybrids on the way back to Africa. But this time, Harry could feel a stronger warmth under the scales, and he knew that what he held  _lived_  in a deeper way than any mass of scales and muscles ever could.  
  
“Give me that.”  
  
Harry looked up. The imposter stood a few feet away from him, and his wand was leveled. At Harry, not at the prone Draco lying on the floor. Harry gave a slight, contemptuous smile. Genius madman he might be, but he hadn’t yet figured out that threatening Draco was more effective than threatening Harry himself, who had faced death almost daily for years.  
  
“Not unless you tell me what it is,” he said, betting on the man’s own obsession to make him want to explain himself, or at least talk about his ruling passion any chance he got.  
  
“It’s his memories,” the man whispered obligingly, staring at the silver mist Harry held. “The innermost ones, the ones I couldn’t get when he was my prisoner because he  _tricked_  me.” His voice made that crime sound worthy of the Dementor’s Kiss. “The ones that will really tell me what it’s like to be Draco Malfoy. The most important perceptions, the influences that crept into his mind before he could speak, and the emotions that will linger on his mind when he dies.” He stepped forwards, one hand out. “Give them to me.”  
  
Harry swallowed and clasped his hands together. That didn’t crush the memories, of course; they foamed over his palms and clung to his fingers, twining, restless, moving, living. Harry dropped his eyes to stare at them for a moment.  
  
“You can give them to me, and that will end the problem,” the imposter said, smiling at him. “I wanted to kill you, but why should I? I have no doubt, now, after I’ve seen this room, that his passion for you is rooted deep in his soul. But if I take it into me, it will become mine. And  _I’m_  not the one who collected these mementoes of you, who made this shrine to you, who destroyed his soul in the pursuit of you.” He stepped closer and lifted a hand as if he would lay it on Harry’s cheek. “You could have the man who loved you whilst knowing, at the same time, that he wasn’t actually the one who did these horrible things.”  
  
Harry felt a moment’s surge of pity. The words were a temptation, yes, but only in the way that an offer of a million Galleons would have been a temptation. It appealed to only a part of him and only for a moment.  
  
Because the scales had fallen from his eyes as he gazed at the material of Draco’s obsession, the differences it had from his own and the similarities, and he understood himself better than he ever had.  
  
The thing he had always wanted was for Draco—as he was, cold and supercilious and talented—to acknowledge that he loved Harry. That was why the fantasy had been impossible, because Draco as Draco was couldn’t do that. And Harry had allowed himself to believe the charade of Draco’s feelings in the last few weeks because he had wanted it in spite of knowing it was impossible.  
  
But now he understood the difference between the charade and the reality, and he wouldn’t allow himself to fall back into pretense.  
  
Understanding Draco, loving Draco, would be difficult, given what he now knew. But Harry’s own love had grown on irrational grounds, and persisted, if twisted into a new shape, when he learned that Draco had betrayed him. It would not leave. It would not wither. It would not die.  
  
He had to live with it, and he had to live with Draco as he was, the same way Draco had to live with the knowledge that Harry now possessed of his relics room.  
  
Draco, bizarre and ugly, strong and beautiful, was reality.  
  
Harry turned and tossed the silver thing he held in the direction of Draco’s body, hoping that his skin would retain the feeling of it, so he could remember what it was to have literally held Draco’s life in his hands. The imposter cried out, his eyes following the motion, his wand flying out as if he could prevent it.  
  
And Harry, without hesitating, cast the spell all Aurors knew and none were supposed to that splintered the man’s wand.   
  
Perhaps even then he might have escaped, he was so mad and so powerful, but Harry Stupefied him, put bindings on his magic and shackles on his ankles, and immediately dragged him out of the room to Apparate back to the Ministry with him and put him in a secure cell.  
  
The man put up no resistance, strangely. He was crying, and his hands moved in small, useless motions. Harry stared at him as they Apparated, wondering what had happened, and why an expression of infinite bitterness twisted his face. Why wasn’t he fighting to get away and complete his task again?  
  
And then he remembered, and smiled.  
  
 _Snape’s Curse Potion. A bitter fate, I think he said._    
  
And what fate was there for the imposter more bitter than to realize that he had lost his chance to replace Draco, and to lose his magic, and perhaps even his knowledge of spells, at the same time?  
  
*  
  
Draco opened his eyes and slowly sat up. The memories of the last minutes before his soul had been drained—or had it? because he seemed to be living—flickered through his mind. He shook his head and stared around.  
  
The relics room was empty except for the Harry in the portrait.  
  
Draco shuddered and wrapped his arms about his knees. So Harry had killed the imposter, or taken him elsewhere. But either way, he had made the decision to put that task above spending time with Draco. He couldn’t have spoken his choice more clearly if he had left it scrawled on the wall in bloody letters.  
  
He had rejected Draco. He wanted no part of him.  
  
Draco lost track of time as he huddled there. He tried several times to lift his head and walk out of the room, but each time his body betrayed him and he collapsed further. Finally, he thought, he had been struck a blow that he was helpless to recover from. He hoped Harry was satisfied—  
  
But even the anger of that thought deserted him, because he had brought this on himself, by not understanding the depth of the feelings he was dealing with.  
  
Footsteps sounded on the shining floor. Draco lifted his head, and blinked and stared when he realized that Harry was walking towards him. For a moment, he had to wonder if it was a hallucination born of his hope.  
  
“Why are you still sitting here?” Harry reached his hands down to him, frowning. “I would have expected you to sit in one of the chairs, at least. It isn’t every day that you have your soul sucked out of you and then returned the way it was, and you could use some comfort.”  
  
Draco shook his head, his tears blinding him and filling his mouth. He caught Harry’s hands and stood, and then stepped forwards and embraced him, silently, desperately. Harry hesitated, then embraced him back.  
  
“Listen,” Harry whispered. “It isn’t going to be easy.”  
  
Draco moved a little to signify that he was listening, but didn’t say anything. Now he thought it was happiness drying his mouth.  
  
“I—I didn’t know you’d gone this deep,” said Harry. “And it changes the way I look at you.” He sighed and shivered. “Being obsessed with me I can forgive. But keeping a reflection of myself prisoner—torturing it, him, the way you did—“ He sighed again. “That’s going to take some thinking to come to terms with.”  
  
“If you can come to terms with it at all,” the portrait Harry murmured rebelliously.  
  
“I’m sorry for what you suffered,” Harry said, and turned in Draco’s arms to look at the picture. “But I can’t change it. What I  _can_  try to do is change the future, learn what I can and can’t accept, and what Draco can and can’t alter about himself.” He hesitated again, then reached out and stroked Draco’s face. Draco hated the way his mouth trembled as he stared at Harry, but he reckoned one moment of humility wasn’t such a terrible price to pay for having his future walk back to him.  
  
“Do you agree?” Harry whispered. “Do you agree that we’ll need to work on this, and  _slowly_  make our way back into complete confidence with each other?”  
  
Draco nodded furiously, then found his voice and said, “Yes. I love you.”  
  
“And I love you,” Harry said. “Strange and painful as it is, nothing like the love I thought I would have at first.” He rested his hands on Draco’s shoulders and stared into his eyes. Draco, not sure what he was looking for, stared nervously back.  
  
“But nevertheless,” Harry said softly a moment later, “it’s the love I have.”   
  
And he kissed Draco, nodded to the portrait version of himself, and guided Draco away from the room, never looking back.


	34. What's Past Is Prologue

“And they  _still_  don’t know who he is?” Harry raised an eyebrow and blew across the steaming cup of tea that Ron had offered him.  
  
Ron shook his head and leaned an elbow on the table behind him. “Amazing, isn’t it? That someone could so thoroughly erase himself…they’ve looked at reports of people missing from all over Britain in the past few years. None of them resemble him. No one has reported a relative or a friend with a sudden obsession with Draco Malfoy. They can’t even clearly define his age, because his age is Malfoy’s.” He paused a moment, and tossed Harry a glance. “Auror Gilder says that, if he’d managed to swallow those memories or that soul or whatever it was that he was trying to steal from Malfoy, he would have become him. Even you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between them.”  
  
Harry knew, from the brief contortion of Ron’s face as he spoke the words, what that admission that Harry was an expert in things Malfoy had cost him. He smiled and put a hand on his friend’s arm in thanks. “Actually,” he said, “I’m not that anxious to know his name. I know who he is.”  
  
Ron blinked at him. “Who?”  
  
“Someone obsessed beyond the point of reason,” Harry said, stepping away and walking towards the door. “The way I could have been.”  
  
*  
  
Severus studied the potion in front of him with a light frown on his face. The Curse Potion had not worked the way he expected. It had brought the imposter back to face his own fate, but that fate had been the loss of his magic at the crucial moment and the inability to assume Draco’s place—a shrinking into insignificance. Severus had intended death instead, the most bitter death possible, the imposter’s dying at Draco’s hands.  
  
 _Why did my potion twist_? Severus was accustomed to emotions and people betraying him, but never his own skills.  
  
The liquid in the cauldron offered no answers, and at last he turned away and picked up the book from which he had drawn the ingredients and recipe of the Curse Potion. He turned the pages until he reached the initial description and looked silently through the words.  
  
When he found the sentence, it practically sprang out at him.  
  
 _The Curse Potion creates a fate of equal bitterness to the hatred that the brewer may invest in it._  
  
Severus lowered the book to the table and did not swear under his breath only because he was calmer than that. Of course. The fate would be bitter, but the book said nothing about the fate being the one the brewer  _wanted_. It only said that it would be bitter in proportion to the emotion invested in the brewing.  
  
So this was the most bitter fate to the imposter.  
  
Severus thought, for a moment, of the young man the imposter had sought to replace: angry, impatient, obsessive, and flawed; strong, resilient, stubborn, and clever.   
  
 _Yes. To aim for that, and not to achieve it, and to spend the rest of his life in Auror custody or in a St. Mungo’s ward for the insane, would be to condemn himself to insignificance.  
  
(Can you say that you have escaped the same desire? his memory of Lily asked him, bright grief in her eyes. You were so jealous of my son’s heroics, because you were convinced that you needed to be acknowledged in the same way for your part in the war. Are you jealous now? Don’t you wish to reduce him to a bone powder for some rat poison, to a scrim on the surface of history that no one else will ever look at or remember?_)  
  
Severus shook his head, a thin smile taking over his lips.  _Do you remember what I thought of you the other day?  
  
(There are too many memories shared for me to isolate just one, Lily answered, and the rising breeze lifted her red hair. She pushed a lock of it behind one ear and stared at him).  
  
You are dead_, Severus responded, and then Vanished the Curse Potion from the cauldron with a flick of his wand, before he closed the book and set it back on the shelf.  
  
*  
  
“So you are here at last.”  
  
Lucius paused one moment as he stepped into his bedroom. Then he shut the door behind him and moved forwards, never taking his eyes from the woman who awaited him in the center of the portrait frame that had always been empty until now.  
  
“I could more profitably speak the same words to you,” he said.  
  
Narcissa regarded him with brilliant, cold eyes narrowed as if against the light of an arctic sun. Her hands were folded at her waist, and she wore sleek, shining robes that flattered her. Lucius could not remember ever seeing her in clothes that did not flatter her. “I was not the one who sank myself in useless grief and refused to be consoled by anything else in the world,” she said.  
  
Lucius opened his mouth to snap back, and then shook his head, realizing that angry words were as useless as his grief had been. This Narcissa was the shadow of the one who had written the diaries and believed so completely in her present that she had destroyed her future. His words must be a shadow of the words he would desire to speak, also.  
  
“You are right,” he said. “I have learned that it is useless to pine for someone who hated me long before her death.”  
  
Narcissa twined a hanging plait of blonde hair around her hand, eyes never leaving him. “Do not say she hated you,” she murmured.  
  
“And why not?” Lucius sat down and leaned forwards, his legs crossed, his own hands folded calmly atop one knee.  
  
“Because it is not true.”  
  
“And you are so sensitive to a lie now?”  
  
Narcissa’s words caught on an indrawn breath, and then she smiled. The smile was colder than her eyes. “Because I would see the memory of the woman she was preserved,” she said. “The truth in the diaries is one kind. Her memories, in which I partially share, are another. And I say that she did not hate you, Lucius. She was impatient with you, she pitied you, and she felt at times a deep scorn because you did not sense her true emotions towards you and you were more concerned with her alone than with Draco.”  
  
“I think  _she_ ,” Lucius said, laying less stress on the word than he wanted to permit himself, “is the one who did not understand my emotions.”  
  
“That may be the case.” Narcissa held his gaze without effort. “I am only telling you what I know and remember. What she felt for you was less hatred than a magnificent indifference.”  
  
Lucius received and absorbed those words in silence. They told him nothing more than what he already knew: that he had wasted the last years of his life, that he had spent his time holding and caressing and kneeling to a mystery that was, after all, not a mystery. The “secret” had been revealed all along in the diaries he read.  
  
He had wanted to know why Narcissa did not care for him. And now he knew. She had not understood him any more than he understood her, and, unlike Lucius, who could still see some value in the people who were different from him, she had cared only for those whose devotion to protecting Draco was total.  
  
And in all the world, she was the only one like that.  
  
A great wave of white pity suddenly drowned Lucius. He still mourned that his wife had not made common cause with him, had not shared her feelings with him, but now he mourned more for her sake than for his. She was the one who had lived the more isolated life, chained to a goal that Lucius would have shared if she had only told him that she wanted it shared.  
  
He stood.  
  
“Where are you going?” the Narcissa in the portrait asked.  
  
“Back to my life,” Lucius said quietly. “You are welcome to come and go as you please,” he added, and he walked to the door and shut it behind him.  
  
Narcissa watched him go with a face which control had wiped clean of all expression.  
  
*  
  
Draco was an expert in reading Harry’s face by now, a few weeks after the arrest of the imposter. He saw the glad smile with which Harry met him when he stepped out of the fireplace into Malfoy Manor, and the shadows in his eyes that made the smile worth less than it could have been.  
  
However, Draco was surely no stranger to self-possession, and though he was hurt by the lack of trust those shadows implied, he knew where it had come from in the first place. So he stood easily, and held out a hand to shake, since Harry seemed restrained enough to want that.  
  
Instead, Harry took him in his arms and kissed him roughly. Draco gasped for a moment, but then gave in eagerly and returned the kiss pressure for pressure. He began shoving Harry backwards almost unconsciously towards the couch in this receiving room, but Harry thought better of it a moment later. He shook his head, gasped himself, and stepped backwards, his eyes brilliant and his face flushed.  
  
“I—I just wanted to touch you,” he said.  
  
“Understandable, when we haven’t seen each other all day,” Draco said. “What did they discover about the imposter?” He knew it was the last day of strict investigation the Aurors had allowed themselves before they gave up on interrogating a man who had no name or identity and handed the imposer over to St. Mungo’s.  
  
“Nothing more.” Harry laid a hand on his cheek and gazed into his eyes for a moment, as if he were evaluating Draco’s response to that statement. Draco looked back calmly, and sincerely. He no longer had much interest in the imposter. The lesson he had learned from the man was of more importance than the man himself. Harry gave a soft smile a moment later, as if he had taken from Draco’s eyes what Draco wanted him to. “What did Keller say about the house?”  
  
Draco smirked. “It’s beautiful, of course.” He had finally had time in the past few weeks to attend to the last commission he had undertaken before his life went mad. Keller had been unwontedly cool; he had his ideas of an architect’s proper place, and it wasn’t in the newspapers. But Draco had brought him around again by sheer talent, and the persuasion of beauty. “I’ve been authorized to start construction next week.”  
  
Harry let out a swift, glad breath and squeezed his waist. “Good,” he said. Draco resisted the impulse to preen, but barely; one of the traits he liked most about Harry was the fact that Harry admired Draco’s talent and liked hearing about his career. “Are you ready for tonight?”  
  
Draco was  _not_  ready for the change of subject, but he had known it was coming, and not for the world would he show his fear. He gave a minute nod.  
  
Harry seemed to see the fear anyway. “We don’t have to go out,” he said. “Not tonight.”  
  
“I want to,” Draco murmured. “For—many reasons. But mostly because I won’t run away from them anymore, or pretend that I don’t care what they think. Both responses are the responses of a coward.”  
  
“Draco,” Harry whispered, and raised a hand to cup his cheek again, bringing his face close enough that Draco thought he’d receive another kiss. But Harry simply stared at him from a few inches away, his eyes fierce as a heartbeat. Draco felt himself flush. He wasn’t one to put much stock into such simple gestures ordinarily, but Harry’s eyes were so  _intense._    
  
“I never knew bravery was that important to you,” Harry murmured at last.  
  
“It’s important to me because it’s important to  _you_ ,” Draco said, and felt as if he should flinch from the brilliance of the smile that followed.  
  
“I love you,” Harry said, in the same tone he’d used to speak Draco’s name a moment ago, and then stepped away from him and extended his hand. “Let’s go, then.”  
  
“Let’s,” Draco said, through dry lips, and took Harry’s wrist. He trusted no one would notice if he squeezed it a bit hard.  
  
*  
  
Harry saw all the eyes that turned towards them when he and Draco swept into the large ballroom where the Ministry function was being held. He was familiar with most of the emotions in them: startlement, hero-worship, envy, admiration, and a certain kind of longing that only appeared in the eyes of people who had never slept with him and were convinced that sleeping with a hero must be different from sleeping with anyone else.  
  
But there was a new feeling this time, one he had never noticed before, perhaps because the emotions about him had always been too extreme. Contempt.  
  
Harry put up his head and forged forwards like someone pushing against a hard sea. There were some people for whom that emotion would always be there now, he knew. They would want to say that he had lowered himself by dating Draco Malfoy. Others would think that he must be a masochist because he had gone back to a lover who betrayed him, which he had never done for anyone else. Others would say with a knowing smirk that the Savior of the Wizarding World was only human after all; he preferred a beautiful body in his bed and a clever tongue to a sincere relationship with a loving person.  
  
Those conclusions would come about, and others like them, or different from them but just as hurtful, when some people who had faith in him now began to realize that he would never abandon Draco.  
  
Harry didn’t care. Or, rather, he cared, especially because Hermione met them with carefully hidden disapproval in her eyes, but he was willing to risk that kind of thing because Draco mattered more to him.   
  
It was like the dark side of their mutual obsessions. He had to live with the knowledge because of the good things those obsessions had brought them.  
  
“Hermione,” Harry said, and kissed her cheek. Then he tightened his hold on Draco’s hand as Draco stepped up beside him. Harry had half-thought he might need to drag him in, but Draco reached for Hermione’s hand without flinching and shook it like a practiced politician.  
  
“Granger,” he said calmly, and without attempting to add anything else—imitating Harry’s own greeting to her, Harry was certain.  
  
Hermione shifted her glance back and forth from one to the other of them, her lips pursed and her breath coming in quiet huffs. Then she nodded once and said, “Malfoy, Harry. Be welcome.” From the direction of her gaze, it might have included one or both of them.  
  
When she turned away, it was her own head held high and two delicate spots of color plastered on her cheeks, and Harry knew there were people who would take certain messages from that, too, and avoid or court Draco according to what they thought it meant.  
  
Harry took a breath. Perhaps it wasn’t the beginning of the greatest friendship in the world, but it was  _a_  beginning.  
  
*  
  
Draco had thought that he would be endlessly bored in the company of the Ministry people—mostly Aurors and workers from the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures—who made up Harry’s friends and colleagues. He had expected to encounter mindless chatter or people who would try to use him to get close to Harry.  
  
He had not expected hostile silence, or conversations dying whenever he passed near a clump of guests, as if his presence were poison to intellectual exchange.  
  
But just because he had not expected it did not mean that he allowed it to take him by surprise. He fetched himself and Harry wine and sandwiches and the small slices of tomato that, lately, all the wizards at all the receptions and parties he intended seemed to think were necessary to serve to their guests. He smiled and nodded at the people he recognized, and offered grave bows to the people he didn’t, or whom he didn’t think he could be on such familiar terms with, including the Head Auror, Kingsley Shacklebolt. He stayed near Harry when he could, but didn’t monopolize his time.  
  
And slowly, as the evening went on, the tenor of some of the conversations around him changed. Draco encountered more slow, thoughtful looks, and fewer people who acted as though he had hydrophobia. A few engaged him in sudden exchanges, or turned from their own groups to involve him as he walked by. Draco would respond with calm graciousness at each time, apparently thankful for the attentions but not panting after them.  
  
 _This is the environment that my parents trained me to thrive in_ , he wanted to say, each time he saw the eyes widening with ill-concealed surprise and respect.  _Charm and tact is largely a matter of saying the right thing at the right time. You shouldn’t find yourself startled when you’re manipulated by someone with the name of Malfoy._  
  
Of course, perhaps they had thought he would be rude just to be rude, even though he possessed the power of charming them if he wanted. Draco concealed a snort behind his wineglass. Lucius’s erratic behavior in the past seven years, which included refusing invitations even from those he knew well, wouldn’t have helped correct that impression.  
  
But maybe he could.  
  
Draco paused over a small bite of cheese and looked at the far wall with unseeing eyes. He hadn’t considered that before, because his own obsession with Harry had blinded him to anything but the personal benefits that would come from making love to Harry, or destroying him, or winning his forgiveness. But there could be some benefits for the family as well, wouldn’t there? They hadn’t been acknowledged by as many people as they should have been since the war, but how much of that was their own fault? How much had they  _tried_  to win acceptance?  
  
 _Not much_ , Draco thought, his pulse racing in his throat.  _But that will have to change now anyway, since I’m with Harry. I might as well use what I can for my own advantage—something that Harry is unlikely to notice, on the one hand, or disapprove of, on the other, since it will also involve me making nice to his friends._  
  
Draco began to smile. This was a world he understood, the kind of environment he had indeed been trained to navigate. He would triumph in it, and he would establish his own name, connected to but separate from Harry’s.  
  
For the first time in years, some of the strands of the obsession that had shut him away from the world cracked, and he began to breathe again.  
  
*  
  
“Harry, what is  _wrong_  with Malfoy?”  
  
“What do you mean?” Harry turned, expecting to find Draco enchanting Kingsley’s arse to do a lap-dance. Ron had that kind of tone.  
  
Instead, he found him talking to an older witch whom Harry recognized as Wilhelmina Gibbons, an unearthly bore most of the department went out of their way in order to avoid. She was speaking with an expression of shining amusement that made her look almost companionable. Draco endured the roar of her words, which Harry knew to be considerable, with a faint smile, almost as if he weren’t enduring them at all.  
  
“He’s talking to her,” Harry said.  
  
“ _Why_?”  
  
Harry smiled a little. A constriction he hadn’t known was tightening around his chest relaxed.  
  
“Because,” he said, “he apparently wants to be on his best behavior.”  
  
He left Ron giving Gibbons a dubious glance, as if she might turn out to have ties to evil pure-blood wizards he had never considered, and went to the table of food. Draco had fetched him a few sandwiches this evening, but Harry was still hungry. Besides, he thought he could return the gesture.  
  
“Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry turned around curiously. He didn’t recognize the pleasant-looking man who stood beside him, but his smile wasn’t nastily sharp, so Harry returned his nod.  
  
“Robert Tasher, with the  _Golden Gleam_ ,” said the man, and held out his hand to be shaken. Harry responded with the gesture he’d perfected when dealing with the twins: a clasp that barely put his fingers into contact with someone’s skin but  _appeared_  hearty enough from a distance.  
  
“I’m afraid I don’t know what the  _Gleam_  is,” he said.  
  
“A paper, of course!” Tasher smiled a moment later and shook his head. “We are new, though. Sometimes I forget how new. Anyway, I wanted to interview you about your conduct with Draco Malfoy. You aren’t actually planning to stay with him, are you?” His voice was rising, and Harry could see other people turning to look. “Someone like that, who was a Death Eater, and hounded you all through school, and betrayed your sexual secrets to the  _Prophet_ , and is probably intending to use you to gain back his lost wealth and prestige?”  
  
Heads had turned all over the room now. Harry saw the flare of nostrils, the widening of interested eyes, and felt a moment of sick frustration.   
  
 _Of course someone would bring this up. There’s never going to be a lack of people without either manners or tact to try and make our lives miserable._  
  
But precisely because he knew that, Harry was not unprepared.  
  
He gave a smile to Tasher that caused him to edge backwards a bit, and then said, “I am planning to stay with him, for as long as we both wish to keep this up.” He turned around and strode to Draco, who had left off speaking with Gibbons.  
  
When he got close, Harry was able to make out the extreme pallor of Draco’s face and the insecurity in his eyes. Harry wouldn’t make promises to last forever, and Draco would have mocked them if he did, but he also felt more vulnerable because of that.  
  
Harry didn’t give him a chance to feel that way for long. He seized Draco’s face in his hands and kissed him, long and deep, adding plenty of tongue for the onlookers, and plenty of tenderness for Draco.  
  
Draco kissed back, winding a hand in Harry’s hair. From the tensing of his shoulders a moment later, he hadn’t planned that gesture and was half-wishing he could take it back.  
  
But he didn’t. He used the hold to guide Harry’s head closer as they kissed, instead.  
  
Harry felt a swell of warm contentment in his belly. The real Draco he saw wasn’t always pretty, but at least Harry had him.  
  
He drew back and smiled at Draco a moment later. “We’re still ready for tonight, after this is done?” he asked, his voice husky and meant to carry.  _Let them see how he affects me. And let them see, too, that this isn’t only based on sex._    
  
Draco blinked twice, then recovered. “We could be ready right now,” he whispered, and shifted closer.  
  
The warm swell of contentment became a shining star.  _He would never render himself this vulnerable for anyone he didn’t love.  
  
Or wasn’t obsessed by_, said the corner of his brain that had adopted Hermione’s voice, as if in compensation for the ring he no longer wore.  
  
Harry smiled and laid a hand on Draco’s shoulder. “Not right now,” he said. “Enjoy yourself first.” He nodded to Gibbons, letting anyone who cared to see what full confidence he had in Draco to speak normally to guests and not be plotting something nefarious, and stepped away.  
  
Draco nodded to him and struck the conversation with Gibbons up again. She responded hesitantly, eyes darting back and forth from Draco to Harry. The rest of the chatter slowly started back to life again as well.  
  
Harry walked back to Tasher, making his stride deliberately cool and casual. “If you have any  _real_  questions,” he told the man, “I’m happy to answer them.”  
  
 _It’ll be a battle, both against them and against ourselves. But it’s one I want to fight._  
  
*  
  
Lucius stood in his drawing room, gazing thoughtfully at the invitation in his hand. It was one he had received every year, from Lady Tillie Wentworth, one of the few pure-bloods who wielded enough influence in the Muggle world to have a title there. She always had four select parties a year, one a season, and lesser people would have died for an invitation from her.  
  
Lucius had never answered.  
  
But then, he had never thought he had a right to answer before, as long as he had not solved the mystery of why his wife didn’t love him.  
  
He smoothed the paper with his palm and gazed out the window a moment. The sun was setting. Loose ribbons of gold and silver wrapped the sky. The highest clouds were blue and red. The middle was a lovely nameless color that Lucius had seen before and yearned after, sometimes in Draco’s company but never in Narcissa’s.   
  
 _There are fewer mysteries than we think, and more problems._  
  
Lucius snatched up his cloak decisively and walked to the door, invitation held firmly before him. He paused on the threshold and wondered for a moment what Draco would think when he arrived home to find his father gone, for once.  
  
Lucius drew in a deep, delighted breath. The mental question and the physical anticipation made him feel like an eagle perched in the open door of a cage, ready to try his wings for the first time in years.  
  
 _I am ready to solve those problems._  
  
And then he spread his wings, and flew.   
  
 **End.**


End file.
